SPIDER: A simple and flexible tool for design and provisioning of protected lightpaths in optical networks

Optical devices are poised to form the core of the next generation of backb one and enterprise networks. Optical routers, dense wavelength division mul tiplexing (DWDM) systems, and cross connects of unprecedented capacities ar e on the verge of large-scale commercial deployment. This massive buildup o f optical gear necessitates careful planning and provisioning of the basic units of transmission-the light-paths. This paper presents a range of techn iques for efficient and reliable optical network design, covering decentral ized dedicated protection to shared path-based mesh restoration. These algo rithms have been incorporated into SPIDER, an extensible software tool with a browser-based user interface, Java*-based visualization, and spreadsheet input/output capabilities. We describe SPIDER and report on recent core ne tworking applications using this tool, which also illustrate the key tradeo ffs in optical network designs involving a variety of grades of protection and the balance between efficient use of wavelengths and restoration time.