Fall 2009 » Research Briefs » A Matter Of Milliseconds: Optical Mesh Networks Recover Rapidly

A Matter Of Milliseconds: Optical Mesh Networks Recover Rapidly

March, 2009

Most people don't realize how much they rely on optical data networks in their daily lives until a cut in a cable or a faulty piece of equipment causes a split-second interruption in data flow. A massive power outage that crippled much of the northeastern United States in August demonstrated the incredible speed that optical data networks require to recover quickly from fault incidents and the serious consequences of a short interruption to critical systems.

To prevent catastrophic failures, network designers rely on highly redundant - and expensive - ring networks. But computer engineer Kazem Sohraby has demonstrated that properly designed mesh networks can be more cost-effective and just as reliable.

Sohraby conducted his study with Kamala Murti and Ramesh Nagarajan from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs.

A ring or mesh optical data network can cover a metropolitan area, an entire state or a larger region. Service interruptions can occur from faults in the equipment or a cut in a cable. Standard acceptable time to restore network performance is 50 milliseconds. Until now, this restoration time has limited the adoption of mesh networks.

"We have shown that mesh networks with a proper link restoration design can achieve the same extremely short restoration time as today's ring-shaped Synchronous Optical Networks," said Sohraby.