Trade-off between Resource Efficiency and Fast Protection for Shared Mesh Protection

Abstract

Shared mesh protection (SMP) protects traffic against failures occurring in a working path, as with linear protection, and allows resource sharing of protection paths with different endpoints. The SMP mechanism coordinates multiple protection paths that require shared resources when failures occur on multiple working paths. When multiple failures occur in SMP networks sharing limited resources, activation can fail because some of the resources in the protection path are already in use. In this case, a node confirming that a resource is not available has the option to wait until the resource is available or to withdraw activation of the protection path. In this study, we recognize that the protection switching time and the number of protected services can be different, depending on which option is used for SMP networks. Moreover, we propose a detailed design for the implementation of SMP by considering options and algorithms that are commonly needed for network nodes. A simulation shows the performance of an SMP system implemented with the proposed design and utilizing two options. The results demonstrate that resource utilization can be increased or protection switching time can be shortened depending on the option selected by the network administrator.