Planificación y optimización de redes ópticas en el Internet del futuro

Abstract

The strict requirements required for the future 5G network, jointly with the high growth forecasts of IP traffic, mainly based on the proliferation of cloud services, create a future panorama full of uncertainties from the perspective of large optical telecommunications networks. Planning and optimization tasks are essential to ensure that the requirements are satisfied in an economically viable manner. This thesis tries to analyze, in the first place, the validity of traffic growth predictions, in the light of current applications in a scenario where the latency requirements imply the evolution of CDNs with the deployment of micro-datacenters. In particular, the effect of this traffic evolution, supported by the optical backbone networks, will be analyzed. Second, the thesis studies some options that allow addressing the expected requirements of the network, from the perspective of three major approaches: a) optimization in the design and management of CDNs, b) programmable control of the network based on software-defined networking and with virtualization in network functions and finally, c) possible introduction of the Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) technology to expand the capacity of transport networks as effective support for the increase of IP traffic. The outcomes of this work conclude, in the first instance, that the evolution of the backbone traffic in the future Internet will depend on the nature of the services that the applications offer, being the balance between user traffic and synchronization one especially determining. On the other hand, the results suggest that place the content close to the users can have direct effect of decreasing the amount of traffic supported by the core networks, in relation to the current forecasts. The use cases analyzed in the SDN-NFV environment determine the need for optimization providing flexibility and programmability in the migration to virtualized systems in the networks. This set of functionalities are essential to satisfy the requirements of the future services in the 5G paradigm. In addition, the proof of concept presented in this thesis supports the joint optimization of network and IT resources for the assistance of service chains in networks based on SDN-NFV. Finally, for SDM-based optical networks, the proposal presented for space channel restriction (SCC) emerges as a valid option to be implemented in ROADMs for flex-grid environments. The validity of this proposal lies in the significant reduction in terms of implementation cost due to its lower complexity and the current availability of the equipment, at the expense of minimal performance degradations, compared to totally permissive options.