A management and visualization framework for reconfigurable WDM optical networks

As the recent phenomenal advance in optical WDM networking technologies con tinues, optical WDM network equipment has been deployed not only in backbon e networks, but also in regional, metropolitan, and access networks, it is widely believed that a major component of the next-generation Internet will be an IP-based optical network employing WDM. WDM wavelength routing and s ignaling have become on active research field, and dynamic and adaptive wav elength routing and assignment algorithms have been proposed. However, ther e is less work on reporting network control and management system implement ation efforts over testbed WDM networks. This article presents a network ma nagement and visualization framework aimed at guiding the development of ma nagement applications for reconfigurable WDM optical networks. A layered fr amework architecture including element and network management and visualiza tion is provided, and an object-based information model representing the WD M network is introduced. Functional components on reconfiguration, software agent, and network visualization services are presented, and important iss ues related to optical lightpath generation are discussed. A network visual ization service also provides WDM control and management APIs to applicatio ns and access networks such as an IP network management system. To illustra te the usage of the framework, we share our experience in implementing the MONET network control and management system, and present network visualizat ion views obtained from the MONET WDM network to highlight the framework fe atures.