Experimental demonstration of software-defined optical network for heterogeneous packet and optical networks

The rapid growth of the network traffic and the diversity of the network requirements bring network service providers new demands and challenges. In order to achieve better efficiency and resource utilization, we need to solve the problems caused by the heterogeneous network environment, such as the low resource utilization and the control and management collaboration problem of heterogeneous networks. The promotion of the software-defined network concept brings the network operators a new way of thinking to solve the problem caused by heterogeneous network environment, especially the convergence of packet and optical network. We propose a control architecture for packet and optical network convergence, including how to be compatible with the existing optical network control architecture. A series of network performance parameters have been demonstrated under various network environments on our testbed.