Traffic grooming in WDM/SONET BLSR rings with multiple line speeds

WDM/SONET provides a natural migration path to support traffic growth. In WDM/SONET, each wavelength is a separate SONET ring and each ring can be set to one of several line speeds. The line speed should be high if there is enough traffic to realize the economy of scale, otherwise, it should be low to reduce the cost. Despite of the advantages, there are no general tools and methodologies available to help network designers enjoy the benefits of multiple line speeds. For the first time, we propose a comprehensive approach to solve the traffic grooming problem, which includes both novel, complete ILP formulations that can be used to solve small size problems exactly and an efficient heuristic algorithm that can be used to solve large problems quickly. Using the tools we developed, we study the trade-offs of shortest path routing, study the cost benefits of traffic switching, compare UPSR and BLSR, and show that multiple line speeds can significantly reduce cost.