Network Protection Route Evaluation for Service Assurance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current network level protection systems lack mechanisms for proactive assurance and measurement of available mesh protection routes, making it difficult for network operators to ensure service restoration and visibility into network state, leading to potential service outages.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus for network level protection route evaluation that defines user-defined thresholds for alternate protection routes, periodically evaluates available routes, and notifies operators through alarms or warnings, enabling remedial actions such as adding capacity, defragmenting links, or increasing optical bandwidth.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If network level protection uses mesh restoration with computed paths at the time of failures, then restoration time increases to several seconds, but bandwidth usage efficiency improves compared to dedicated protection
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary evaluation of mesh protection routes and proactively identifies potential restoration paths before failures occur. By pre-assessing the network topology and computing potential protection routes in advance, the system reduces the computation time required at the moment of failure while maintaining the efficiency benefits of mesh restoration.
2Loss of time
If dedicated protection paths are provisioned in advance, then restoration speed improves to sub-50 ms, but bandwidth usage becomes inefficient due to active but unused protection paths
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements continuous monitoring and evaluation of network conditions, providing feedback on the availability and quality of mesh protection routes. This feedback mechanism allows the system to dynamically adjust protection strategies, maintaining fast restoration capabilities while optimizing bandwidth usage based on current network state.
3Device complexity
If network operators rely on reactive restoration without proactive evaluation, then system complexity remains low, but service assurance and visibility into network state deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables automatic evaluation and monitoring of mesh protection routes without requiring extensive manual configuration or complex external management systems. The self-service capability allows the network to autonomously assess its own protection capabilities, providing service assurance while maintaining relatively simple system architecture.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of network level protection route evaluation and remediation in a network includes defining thresholds for one or more services, wherein the thresholds define how many expected alternate protection routes are available for the one or more services for network level restoration; periodically evaluating a number of available alternate protection routes for the one or more services; notifying a network operator responsive to the number of available alternate protection routes being below the thresholds; and performing one or more remedial actions in the network based on the notifying.