Path Table based Routing Mechanism in Software-Defined Optical Transport Networks (SD-OTN)

The dynamic establishment and removal of an end-to-end light-path consume a lot of time which are also the main burden of control plane in optical transport networks. With the frequent arrival and departure of services, the control plane needs to handle a large number of control and management messages to conduct path computation, resource reservation and cross connection configuration. This draft proposes a novel routing mechanism based on Path Table for software-defined optical transport networks (SD-OTN). The Path Table reserves partial activated established light-paths that can be directly used by subsequent requests for subsequent services. This new routing mechanism can reduce the network load and save routing time for some services.