Abstract

The benefit of migrating from fault-tolerant static WDM networks to survivable dynamic WDM networks is evaluated in terms of the trade-off between the additional network capacity (number of wavelengths) required to provide fault tolerance capability and the availability obtained by doing so. For the static WDM network case, wavelength requirements were obtained using a near-to-optimal dimensioning heuristic procedure, considering shared protection. For the dynamic WDM network case, wavelength requirements to guarantee a blocking probability threshold were evaluated using simulationbased techniques, for shared protection and restoration survivability mechanisms. Results show that, for every additional wavelength in the network, the availability gain of restored dynamic WDM networks is higher than that obtained using static or dynamic protected networks. We expect these results will help network operators in the decision making of migration processes.