On the Capacity Requirements of ASONs versus OTNs

Automatic Switched Optical Networks (ASON) are currently a hot topic in optical network research. This paper studies the capacity savings that can be obtained with this networking paradigm, compared to the more classical approach of a static Optical Transport Network (OTN) supporting semi-permanent connections. The results shown in this paper confirm the cost-efficiency that can be achieved with an ASON-based network due to the sharing of network resources network. The influence of traffic parameters as the Inter-Arrival Time (IAT) and the Holding Time (HT) of the switched connections on this capacity saving are studied. Also the effect of the topology is investigated.