Archive | 2021
Virtualization in optical networks
Abstract
This paper describes virtualization in optical networks. The rapid growth of Internet traffic, new services and the rapid development of technologies such as the Internet of Things and next generation 5G mobile networks require greater demands on the bandwidth of optical networks. Variety of network services requires network transport with more flexible bandwidth access capabilities. This means that future transport networks must provide flexible bandwidth for dynamic services through intelligent management. In the same time, optical networks still face certain challenges in introducing and expanding services. The main difficulty is to provide guaranteed performance, including access to routing, convergence and route computation times, path detection time, reliability and resource utilization rate. Current level of operation and maintenance of optical networks does not meet the requirements of customers. For these reasons, optical virtualization is a necessary technology to meet the specified set of network requirements, while providing the necessary isolation between its segments. This document first introduces the concept of optical network virtualization and its application for optical network elements and transport technologies. Then the paper describes the various technologies of virtualization in optical networks and the existing problems.