High performance optical backbones for next generation Internet

In this paper, we present a performance analysis of WDM-based networks with nodal degrees ranging from 2 to 5. It is shown that the increase of the nodal degree from 2 to 3 leads to higher nodal degree gains, whereas the increase of nodal degree from 4 to 5 leads to small nodal degree gains. These results make degree 3 and degree 4 topologies very attractive for use in optical Internet backbones. It is also shown that there are several degree 4 topologies with smallest diameter (highest performance) and several topologies with a diameter slightly higher than the smallest diameter, which have a similar performance. The existence of these topologies increase the implementation flexibility of degree four topologies in the optical core of IP-over-WDM networks.