Network engineering-control of dynamic link topology in user networks

To date, considerable effort has been devoted to the study of dynamically switched optical networks. While much work has focused on provider issues of setting up and tearing down connections to satisfy user requests, this paper studies the user network issues of dynamically changing the link topology and free capacity via automatically choosing the optical transport connections. We introduce a new process to complement traffic engineering and network planning, which we call network engineering. Network engineering entails complement automatically rearranging a user network link topology in support of user traffic demands by increasing or decreasing the capacity of a network. We also give a rationale for network engineering and discuss where and when the link topology needs to be adjusted. Network engineering enables effective rearranging (connecting, modifying, and disconnecting) of aggregated traffic units at timescales larger than an individual traffic unit in a user-provider network relationship. © 2003 Lucent Technologies Inc.