The Forcer Concept and Express Route Planning in Mesh-Survivable Networks

To date, mesh network design theory has beendeveloped for the case where working and protectioncapacity is terminated at every node. It is recognizedthat express routes, which bypass some nodes en-route, would decrease the total DCS port costs but ithas been unclear how to incorporate bypass planning inthe optimal spare capacity design for a mesh-restorablenetwork. An important issue is whether the introduction of nodal bypass will increase the total sparecapacity needed for restorability, due to a reduction ofrestoration re-routing flexibility. To address thesequestions, we introduce the forcer concept for analysis of the relationship between workingand spare capacity in a mesh-restorable network. Weapply the forcer concept to show theoretically whybypass in fact need never require an increase in sparing and may actually permit a decrease in somecases. In tests to validate and exploit these findings,an average reduction of 12% in total spare capacity and16% in DCS port count totals were obtainedsimultaneously with an Integer Programming optimization. Thesesavings are relative to an already optimized fullyterminated network design. The work thus contributes togreater theoretical understanding and designcost-effectiveness for mesh-based restorable networks.