Distributed control protocols for wavelength reservation and their performance evaluation

This paper describes distributed (or decentralized) protocols for establish ing wavelength paths in point-to-point WDM networks. Distributed control im proves reliability as well as scalability and reduces implementation cost o f a network, but also presents major challenges in managing/allocating wave lengths efficiently. Two types of distributed wavelength reservation protoc ols are proposed and evaluated, namely forward and backward. The benefit of wavelength conversion is assessed first based on the evaluation of the for ward reservation protocols, and it is found that wavelength conversion can result in a performance advantage in a distributed environment. For network s without wavelength conversion, a class of backward reservation protocols is studied and shown to generally perform better than their forward counter parts.