NeTS: Small: Migration Towards Terascale Flexible-Grid Optical Networks

光纤网络被部署在世界各地的电信骨干网中，以承载巨大且呈指数级增长的互联网流量。然而，这种流量的增长使光纤网络的容量变得紧张，这促使研究人员探索利用光纤网络中可用带宽的新方法。传统上，光纤的频谱被划分为等距光通道的固定网格。为了从可用频谱中挤出更多的资源，这种传统的固定网格正在向灵活的网格发展，在这种网格中，单个信道可以放置在频谱中的任何位置，并根据其承载的流量进行调整。本研究将探讨从固定网格到下一代灵活网格光纤网络的新迁移策略，以及最大化网络可承载流量的策略。这将使网络效率更高，从而降低作为互联网基础的通信网络的成本。柔性电网技术具有巨大的潜力，但也带来了巨大的复杂性。该项目解决了将柔性电网技术纳入通信网络的两个主要问题。首先，它将研究潜在的固定到灵活的网格迁移策略，考虑到设备特性的复杂性，详细的节点架构和网络优化研究中的物理（信号）损伤。该项目将系统地解决可能的升级路径，包括哪些节点应该首先升级，网络中是否以及在哪里应该创建灵活的网格“岛”，以及当前网络状态下应该升级多少节点。该项目将使用一个24节点的全国网络，满足每秒太比特的总流量需求，以探索每种方法的相对优缺点。该项目的第二个重点是解决此类网络中的流量疏导问题。虽然传统的流量梳理本质上是路由和（固定大小）打包问题的组合，但这里的重点是在容器（箱）大小随时间变化时有效聚合流量的新策略。

Fiber optic networks are deployed worldwide in telecom backbone networks to carry the huge and exponentially growing amount of Internet traffic. However, this traffic growth is straining the capacity of fiber optic networks, which has led researchers to explore new ways of using the bandwidth available in them. Traditionally, a fiber's spectrum is divided into a fixed grid of equally-spaced optical channels. To squeeze more out of the available spectrum, this conventional fixed grid is evolving towards a flexible grid, where individual channels can be placed anywhere in the spectrum, and sized to match the traffic they carry. This research will investigate novel migration strategies from fixed-grid towards next-generation flexible-grid fiber networks, and strategies for maximizing the traffic a network can carry. This will enable high network efficiency, thus lowering the cost of the communications networks that underlie the Internet. Flex-grid technology holds enormous potential, but also brings with it significant complexity. This project tackles the two main issues associated with incorporating flex-grid technology into communications networks. First, it will investigate potential fixed-to-flex grid migration strategies, taking into account the complexities of device characteristics, detailed node architectures and physical (signal) impairments in network optimization studies. The project will systematically address possible upgrade paths, including which node(s) should be upgraded first, whether and where flex-grid 'islands' should be created within networks, and how many nodes should be upgraded for current network state. The project will use a 24-node nationwide network with aggregate terabit-per-second traffic demand to explore the relative advantages and disadvantages of each approach. The project's second major thrust is to tackle the problem of traffic grooming in such networks. While traditional traffic grooming is essentially a combined routing and (fixed-size) bin-packing problem, the focus here is on novel strategies to efficiently aggregate traffic as container (bin) sizes vary in time.