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On Advantages of Elastic Optical Networks for Provisioning of Cloud

Computing Traffic

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KLINKOWSKI_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:31 PM Page 44

On the Advantages of
Elastic Optical Networks for
Provisioning of Cloud Computing Traffic
Mirosł aw Klinkowski, National Institute of Telecommunications, Poland
Krzysztof Walkowiak, Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland

Abstract
This article provides motivation for the elastic optical network (EON) approach, an
efficient and cost-effective solution for provisioning of cloud computing traffic. As
opposed to wavelength switched optical networks (WSONs), the capabilities of
which are limited by the use of rigid frequency grids, EON architectures allow for
both scalable bandwidth provisioning and flexible resource allocation. The deploy-
ment cost, energy consumption, and bandwidth usage for both EON and classical
WSON transport networks are compared in pan-European and U.S. backbone net-
works for 2012–2020 using Cisco traffic predictions. Results show that the EON
concept significantly outperforms WSON in all examined criteria, and the gap
between the two architectures increases in subsequent years. Moreover, potential
advantages of anycast routing in transport networks with data center traffic are
demonstrated.

I n last few years, cloud computing has evolved from an

emerging technology to a recognized networking approach
that is gaining extensive acceptance and deployment. The
concept of cloud computing, combining both flexible net-
work access and scalable distributed computing, provides per-
fect solutions to many present-day business and research
challenges. Both business and public customers are gradually
migrating from the traditional client-server model to the cloud
model.
Concurrently, optical fiber networks play an important role
in communications networks since they provide an infrastruc-
ture for the transport of aggregated IP traffic. During the past
couple of years, research in optical networking has experi-
enced significant advances, which among others have been
governed by developments of spectrally efficient modulation
techniques and new functional optical components. It is
broadly expected that with the advent of new networking
capabilities and demanding network services, the evolution of
transport networks will lead toward mixed-line-rate (MLR)
and elastic/flexible optical network (EON) architectures [1, 2].
As a consequence, the next generation optical transport net-
works will utilize network resources more efficiently and, at
the same time, provide network connectivity adaptively
according to bandwidth demands.
Taking into account both great interest of the research
community in EON solutions and the feasibility of EON tech-
nologies, it is important to recognize the potential advantages
of EON, with respect to conventional WSON transport net-
works implemented with wavelength-division multiplexing
(WDM) technology in the new cloud computing context. This
article is our first attempt to answer this question. In particu-
lar, we focus on the evaluation of the overall cost, energy, and
spectrum gain resulting from the implementation of EON
technology in the optical transport network serving aggregated
traffic demands. The evaluation is performed for two repre-
sentative network topologies, namely, a pan-European and a
United States network. We assume realistic traffic demands
projected for 2012–2020 and taking into account a substantial-
ly growing contribution of inter-data center traffic, which is
related to the cloud computing traffic. Eventually, we briefly
discuss some other aspects related to the design and operation
of cloud-ready EONs, such as provisioning and survivability of
anycast connections as well as dynamic and adaptable band-
width provisioning in the scenarios with heterogeneous and
time and geographically varying traffic demands.
The main novelties of this article compared to previous
works addressing the comparison of EON with traditional
WSON are as follows:
• Traffic patterns applied in the simulations are based on
Cisco predictions.
• The anycasting approach is considered to serve the traffic
between users and data centers.
• Various options with different flexibility of frequency grids
and transponders are examined.
Cloud Networking
Cloud Computing
The current expansion of cloud computing follows mainly
from several recent IT trends, including the “dot-com boom,”
which started an explosion of interest in outsourcing IT ser-
vices; the popularity, maturity, and scalability of the present
Internet; and the appearance of large data centers developed
by companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft [3].

44 0890-8044/13/$25.00 © 2013 IEEE IEEE Network • November/December 2013

KLINKOWSKI_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:31 PM Page 45
The most common elements in the cloud computing defini-
tions are network access and distributed computing resources.
In the last few years, these two issues have been the focus of
much interest in many areas of industry, parallel to the
tremendous popularity of the Internet and growing needs to
process huge amount of data, including the big data concept.
Big data is a general idea used to explain the exponential
increase, availability, and use of various types of information
coming from numerous different sources (e.g., climate infor-
mation, stock ticker data, financial transactions, sensor data,
posts to social media, digital pictures and videos, and pur-
chase transaction records).
There are three major types of services provided in cloud
computing systems [4, 5]:
• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). In this model, a customer
outsources from the provider the equipment used to sup-
port operations, including storage, hardware, servers, virtual
machines (VMs), and networking components. The provider
is the owner of the equipment, and is responsible for hous-
ing, running, and maintaining it. The client typically pays on
a per-use basis. Examples of IaaS include Amazon EC2 and
Windows Azure Virtual Machines.
• Platform as a service (PaaS). In this model, a customer
rents virtualized servers and associated services (e.g., oper-
ating system, programming language execution environ-
ment, database, web server) for running existing
applications or developing and testing new ones. Examples
include Google App Engine and Microsoft Windows Azure
Compute.
• Software as a service (SaaS). In this model, applications are
hosted by service providers and made available to cus-
tomers over a network, typically the Internet. The cus-
tomers do not manage the cloud infrastructure and platform
on which the application is running, which consequently
reduces the requirement to install and run the application
on the customer’s own hardware, simplifying maintenance
and support. Examples include Google Apps and Microsoft
Office 365.
The SaaS approach looks to become an increasingly domi-
nant model that also follows from the fast development of
technologies that support web services and service-oriented
architecture (SOA). Moreover, this model is the simplest one
in terms of business needs.
Cloud-Ready Transport Networks
A transport network is an indispensable element of the cloud
computing model since it provides connectivity between dis-
tributed computing resources. The unprecedented develop-
ment of cloud computing triggers the need to make a critical
review of currently used networks from the perspective of
cloud computing requirements. According to [6], current
transport networks are not efficiently designed to meet the
needs of cloud environments. In particular, the authors of [6]
highlight three requirements for cloud-ready transport net-
works:
• Flexibility, defined as the ability to guarantee the required
capacity on demand
• Multilayer oriented network management
• Cross-strata capabilities enabling joint optimization of the
resources of both the cloud-based application and the
underlying network providing connectivity
Moreover, existing networks are mostly focused on unicast
(one-to-one) traffic, while different types of applications run-
ning on cloud computing systems lead to new traffic patterns
including anycast (one-to-one-of-many) flows. Eventually, con-
centration of processing in relatively small number of sites
(i.e., data centers) means that the volume of traffic on net-
IEEE Network • November/December 2013
work links adjacent to these sites can become very large; thus,
network technologies supporting high capacity may be
required.
Virtualization
Virtualization can be defined as a set of techniques that
abstracts the details of a physical element (e.g., hardware plat-
form, storage device, operating system, or network resources)
and provides virtualized resources. A very common example
of the virtualization approach is a VM, that is, a computing
environment in which an operating system or program can be
installed and run. Here, user software executed on VMs is
separated from the underlying hardware resources. In conse-
quence, the VM emulates a physical computing environment
that can easily be copied and moved between host servers.
The migration capability following from virtualization enables
both simple sharing of computing resources in data centers
and on-demand assigning or reassigning of virtual resources to
applications. Moreover, virtualization within cloud data cen-
ters enables the use of economical commodity hardware, and
introduces elasticity, load balancing, and economies of scale.
Therefore, virtualization is perceived as one of the key foun-
dations of cloud computing [3–5].
The key impact of virtualization on cloud networking fol-
lows from the migration capability. In a nutshell, virtualization
enables the migration of VMs to other servers, with the aim to
both improve performance and protect against failures. The
migration can be arranged within the data center or outside
the data center. In the latter case, it has a twofold impact on
the transport network traffic. First, the virtual machines and
related data must be sent (migrated) from one data center to
another one. Second, after the migration, all network traffic
related to migrated systems is carried to/from a new data cen-
ter. Moreover, the relatively simple migration provided by vir-
tualization and cloud computing allows application of anycast
routing, or anycasting: the applications can easily be moved
between data centers and then accessed by users, according to
various objectives, such as cost, performance, and survivability.
Data Center Traffic in the Internet
The growing popularity of cloud computing and the preceding
advent of grid computing triggered changes in Internet traffic.
Indeed, increasing numbers of various workloads are served
by data centers accessed through the Internet. Consequently,
a dominant and ever growing volume of Internet traffic can be
categorized as data center traffic. Cisco, in forecast reports
“Cisco Visual Networking Index” and “Cisco Global Cloud
Index,” categorizes the network traffic and presents various
statistics including volume of the traffic in exabytes per year
and compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) in 2011–2016.
According to Cisco, the Internet traffic can be divided into
the following categories:
• Non data center traffic — 70 exabytes of traffic in 2011,
predicted CAGR for 2011–2016 18 percent
• Data center to user — 299 exabytes of traffic in 2011, the
predicted CAGR for 2011–2016 31 percent
• Data center to data center — 118 exabytes of traffic in
2011, the predicted CAGR for 2011–2016 32 percent
The first two types of traffic (non-data-center traffic and data-
center-to-user traffic) establish the consumer traffic, which
can be further subdivided into various services like file shar-
ing, Internet video, web email and data, online gaming, and
voice over IP. The traffic related to data centers compromises
both cloud data center and traditional data center traffic.
According to Cisco, although in 2011 cloud traffic was only 39
percent of the overall data center traffic, cloud traffic is going
to grow much faster (44 percent CAGR 2011–2016) than the
45
KLINKOWSKI_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:31 PM Page 46
traditional data center traffic (17 percent CAGR 2011–2016).
Cisco also specifies another type of traffic related to data cen-
ters: traffic that remains within the data center. The volume
of the intra-data-center traffic is the largest compared to the
above types (about 76 percent of all data center traffic in
2011). Note that this traffic is not carried over the Internet
and therefore is not included in our analysis.
Elastic Optical Networks
The Evolution of Optical Transport Networks
Nowadays optical communication networks are limited to
WDM transmission systems, which operate within rigid/fixed
frequency grids and with single-line-rate (SLR) transponders
making use of single-carrier modulation techniques. The main
drawbacks of current systems are their low spectral efficiency,
lack of adaptability to heterogeneous bandwidth demands,
and low optical path (lightpath) scalability in terms of carried
bit rate. Taking into account these arguments, the needs of
emerging network services, and recent advances in optical net-
working, it is expected that optical transport networks will
evolve toward more flexible and functional architectures [2].
The currently foreseen evolution path of optical transport net-
works comprises:
• The application of advanced modulation formats, such as
phase shift keying (PSK) and quadrature amplitude modu-
lation (QAM) in MLR networks, allowing for 100 Gb/s con-
nection provisioning
• Elastic access to optical spectrum resources within flexible
frequency grids, enabling further bandwidth scalability
• The use of multi-carrier modulation techniques such as
optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (O-
OFDM), allowing for highly-granular and elastic bandwidth
provisioning by means of splitting a high-rate data stream
into a number of low-rate data streams that are transmitted
simultaneously over a number of subcarriers
Eventually, each of the above components will bring improve-
ment in spectral efficiency.
Elastic Optical Network Architectures
The concept of EON, proposed initially in [1] as a SLICE
architecture, is a novel and very promising solution for next
generation optical networks. The main innovation of EON
with respect to conventional WSON is the provisioning of
sub-wavelength granularity for low-rate transmission and
super-channel connectivity for accommodating ultra-high-
capacity client signals within a common network. The EON
allows flexible allocation of appropriate-sized optical band-
width, by means of contiguous concatenation of optical spec-
trum, to an end-to-end lightpath according to traffic demand.
Two components are essential for EON architectures:
bandwidth-variable transponders (BV-Ts) and bandwidth-vari-
able wavelength cross-connects (BV-WXCs). The role of a
BV-T is to adapt the client data signal to be sent to/received
from the optical network with just enough frequency
resources. Concurrently, BV-WXCs allow the creation of an
optical routing path through the network by switching trans-
mitted signals within their frequency bandwidth to appropri-
ate switch output ports. EON architecture implementations
and proof-of-concept EON experiments have recently been
reported in [1, 7, 8]. To meet the new requirements of flexible
spectrum allocation in EON, the International Telecommuni-
cation Union Telecommunication Standards Sector (ITU-T)
has revised Recommendation G.694.1 to include the defini-
tion of a flexible WDM grid [9]. At the same time, standard-
ization activities concerning extensions to signaling protocols
are ongoing within the Internet Engineering Task Force
46
(IETF) Common Control and Measurement Plane Working
Group.
Cloud-Ready Elastic Optical Networks
EON architectures are considered one of the technological
pillars for building effective and cost-efficient cloud- and any-
cast-ready transport networks due to their elastic and on-
demand bandwidth connectivity, which is essential for the new
service context [6]. Indeed, the use of advanced modulation
formats and techniques in software-defined BV-Ts [10] and
the operation within flexible frequency grids allows for adap-
tive bandwidth provisioning in response to dynamic traffic
variations — resulting from virtualization and anycasting — in
both the time and geographical domains. Apart from that, the
adaptation of modulation levels according to transmission
path characteristics may bring significant savings in terms of
spectrum utilization. Since the transmission on shorter paths
can be performed with higher modulation levels, thus requir-
ing less spectrum, the aggregated anycast traffic may be
directed toward nearer data centers, thus allocating less spec-
trum resources to lightpath connections. Also, the high band-
width scalability of EON technologies meets the requirements
of ever growing traffic demands.
Case Studies
In order to examine the potential advantages of EONs for pro-
visioning cloud computing traffic, we show below a case study.
Real-world networks and service models are developed and
used in this study. The optical network architectures discussed
in a previous section are compared in two representative net-
work topologies: a pan-European network (called Euro) and a
U.S. long-haul network (called US). Service traffic is modeled
according to the forecast reports “Cisco Visual Networking
Index” and “Cisco Global Cloud Index.” All assumptions of our
simulations are made according to close estimates of real
requirements of national and international operators, and in
reference to data provided in the literature. To run the simula-
tions, we use our own simulation system developed in C++. As
the optimization method, we apply the Adaptive Frequency
Assignment (AFA) heuristic algorithm proposed in [11].
Optical Transport Networks
We analyze four alternative optical transport network scenar-
ios:
• WSON-MLR — a wavelength switched optical network
allowing for mixed-line-rate transmission with fixed 10
Gb/s, 40 Gb/s, and 100 Gb/s WDM transponders ,and trans-
mission distance limits equal to 3200 km, 2300 km, and
2100 km, respectively [12].
• WSON-OFDM-MMF — a WSON with the transponders
implementing the polarization-division multiplex (PDM)-
OFDM technology with multiple modulation formats
selected adaptively between binary PSK (BPSK), quadra-
ture PSK (QPSK), and m-QAM, where m belongs to {8, 16,
32, 64}. Here, the spectral efficiency is equal to 1, 2, …, 6
[b/s/Hz], respectively, for these modulation formats; PDM
allows the spectral efficiency to be doubled.
• EON-OFDM-SMF — an elastic optical network with BV-Ts
implementing the PDM-OFDM technology (as in the
WSON-OFDM-MMF scenario) and the QPSK (single)
modulation format.
• EON-OFDM-MMF — an elastic optical network with BV-
Ts implementing the PDM-OFDM technology and multiple
modulation formats (as in WSON-OFDM-MMF).
WSON operates within the fixed 50 GHz ITU-T, grid while
EON implements a flexible ITU-T grid of 6.25 GHz granulari-
IEEE Network • November/December 2013
KLINKOWSKI_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:31 PM Page 47

ty. Moreover, both WSON-OFDM-

MMF and EON scenarios use three Oslo
types of BV-Ts, each characterized by Stockholm
different capacity limits: 40 Gb/s, 100
Gb/s, and 400 Gb/s, respectively. The
BV-Ts allow for bit rate adaptability
with 10 Gb/s granularity. The 100
Gb/s capacity limit in WSON-MLR
Glasgow Copenhagen
comes from the assumption of the
use of currently available PDM-QPSK
transponders and the fixed ITU-T
Hamburg
frequency grid. The same 50 GHz Dublin
limit per channel is present in Amsterdam Berlin Warsaw
WSON-OFDM-MMF; however, the
London
use of PDM-OFDM transponders
Brussels
and higher modulation levels allows Frankfurt Prague
the signal to fit in the channel. When
applying the PDM-OFDM technolo- Paris Strasbourg
Munich Vienna
gy, we make use of the transmission
Zurich Budapest
model presented in [13], which esti-
mates the transmission distance in a
function of the selected modulation Lyon Milan Zagreb
level and transported bit rate. We Bordeaux Belgrade
introduce a 12.5GHz guard band
between neighboring connections. In
all scenarios, we assume that the Rome
Barcelona
transmission reach is extended by
means of regenerators, which are Madrid
applied whenever necessary.

Network Topology Athens

The Euro network includes 28 nodes

and 82 directed links, while the US
network consists of 26 nodes and 84 (a)
directed links (Fig. 1). In the case of
the Euro network, the nodes are locat-
ed mostly in capital cities or other Seattle
large cities. In the case of the US net-
work, the nodes represent the largest Minneapolis
metropolitan areas. By default, we
assume that there are seven data cen- Detroit Albany Boston
Chicago
ter nodes in each network; however, SaltLakeCity
Cleveland
New York
scenarios with five and nine data cen- Denver Kansas City Indianapolis
Washington DC
ters were tested as well. Moreover, StLouis
SanFrancisco
each network has three interconnec- Tulsa Nashville
LasVegas
tion points to other networks (e.g., Charlotte
locations for submarine cable landing LosAngeles Atlanta
Dallas
stations) used to carry international ElPaso
traffic. The location of data center Houston NewOrleans
nodes and interconnection points was
made according to data available at
http://www.datacentermap.com/. Miami

Service Demands (b)

A model of service demands is creat-
ed for period 2012–2020 under the Figure 1. Topology and location of data centers and interconnection points for: a) Euro; b)
forecast of Cisco in their “Cisco Visu- US networks.
al Networking Index” and “Cisco
Global Cloud Index” reports. The
traffic matrix in each network includes A–Z service demands
of four types (Table 1):
• City-city (CC) traffic represents all non-data-center traffic
calculated with CAGR 18 percent.
• City-data center (CD) traffic represents all data center to
user traffic calculated with CAGR 31 percent.
• Data center–data center (DD) traffic is calculated with
CAGR 32 percent.
• International (IN) traffic — All traffic leaving/entering the
particular network IS calculated as a percentage of all net-
work traffic.
As in [14], the CC demands are created using a multivari-
able gravity model. In more detail, total CC traffic (shown in
Table 1) is divided to each city pair m and n proportional to
the product of their population (Pm × Pn) and inversely pro-
portional to the distance between the cities (dmn). It should be

IEEE Network • November/December 2013 47

KLINKOWSKI_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:31 PM Page 48

noted that the population Pm reflects not the particular city assigned to each data center inversely proportional to the
population but the population of the region that the city cov- value (dmn)0.5, where dmn denotes the distance between con-
ers (e.g., country or state). sidered nodes. Notice that the distance is adjusted by an expo-
The data center traffic is generated not only by individual nential factor e = 0.5 to reflect the fact that data center traffic
users but also by business parties, so its volume depends on to a smaller extent is locally oriented; hence, in the calcula-
both network user number (population) and economy level, tions, in place of distance d mn a smaller value (d mn ) 0.5 is
expressed here by gross domestic product (GDP) value. applied, and thus the impact of the distance is decreased.
Therefore, in the case of the CD traffic, the total CD traffic is The assignment of CD traffic described above directly
shared among all cities proportional to the product of city determines the load of each data center, denoted as DDm. To
population and GDP (P m × G m ). The GDP parameter G m generate the DD demands, again we apply a multivariable
represents the economy level of a country (Euro network) or gravity model. However, in that case, the traffic between data
state (US network). Then the CD traffic of each city is centers m and n is proportional to the product of their load
(DDm × DDn) and inversely proportional to the
distance between the nodes (dmn), again adjusted
Euro network by an exponential factor e = 0.5.
The volume of the international traffic is set as
Traffic volume (Tb/s) a percentage of all network traffic. We assume
that in the case of the Euro network the propor-
Year tion of IN traffic was 20 percent, while the corre-
City–data Data center–
City–city International Total sponding parameter for the US network was 10
center data center
percent. The total IN traffic is first spread to
2012 2.0 10.0 4.0 4.0 20.0 each city m proportional to the product of popu-
lation and GDP (P m × G m). Next, the traffic of
2014 2.9 17.1 6.9 6.7 33.6 each city is equally divided to each interconnec-
tion point.
2016 4.1 29.3 12.0 11.3 56.7
The initial volume of traffic in 2012 is set to 20
Tb/s for the Euro network and 30 Tb/s for the
US network. The proportions of traffic types in
2018 5.6 50.3 20.9 19.2 96.1
2012 are based on Cisco reports. The traffic val-
ues for subsequent years (i.e., 2014, 2016, 2018,
2020 7.9 86.3 36.5 32.7 163.3
and 2020) are generated according to the CAGR
of each traffic type.
US network The basic bandwidth unit is set to 10 Gb/s, and
all bandwidth demands were rounded up to a
Traffic volume (Tb/s) multiple of 10. Demands that exceeded particular
Year transponder capacity limits of a given scenario
City–data Data center– were split proportionately into smaller demands.
City_city International Total
center data Ccenter
Service Routing
2012 3.5 16.8 6.7 3.0 30.0 The aggregated traffic demands are served in the
optical transport network according to the follow-
2014 4.9 28.8 11.6 5.0 50.4 ing assumptions. For each demand, the transpon-
der with the lowest capacity limit, but exceeding
2016 6.8 49.5 20.3 8.5 85.1 the demand volume, is selected. Additionally, in
EON the modulation level for which a given per-
2018 9.5 84.9 35.3 14.4 144.1 formance metric was minimized is selected. As
performance metrics we use:
2020 13.3 145.6 61.5 24.5 244.9 •Network cost
•Power consumption
Table 1. Summary of network traffic for Euro and US networks in 2012–2020. •Optical spectrum resource usage
In our evaluation, the cost includes the capital
expenditure (CAPEX) cost of equipment
(transponders, regenerators) and annual operat-
Relative Power ing expenditure (OPEX) cost related to fiber
cost consumption (W) leasing. All costs are presented in Euros at the
current prices. The future cost predictions do not
10 Gb/s WDM transponder/regenerator 1 47 include the inflation rate. The power consump-
tion is calculated according to a sum of all
40 Gb/s WDM/O-OFDM transponder/ transponders’ and regenerators’ energy require-
2.5 125
regenerator ments. Finally, the frequency usage denotes the
width of spectrum in terahertz required in the
100 Gb/s WDM/O-OFDM transponder/ network to serve all demands. We report the
3.75 215
regenerator maximum spectrum usage defined as the maxi-
mum required spectrum over all network links
400 Gb/s O-OFDM transponder/regenerator 5.5 330 and the average spectrum usage calculated as the
average required spectrum in network links.
Table 2. Cost and power consumption of transponders/regenerators. We make similar cost and power consumption

48 IEEE Network • November/December 2013

KLINKOWSKI_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:31 PM Page 49

EON-OFDM-MMF cost EON-OFDM-SMF cost WSON-OFDM-MMF cost WSON-MLR cost

Cost per 1 year (min EURO) EON-OFDM-MMF power EON-OFDM-SMF power WSON-OFDM-MMF power WSON-MLR power

Cost per 1 year (min EURO)

30 600 50 1000

Power consumption (kW)

Power consumption (kW)

45 900
25 500 40 800
20 400 35 700
30 600
15 300 25 500
20 400
10 200 15 300
5 100 10 200
5 100
0 0 0 0
2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020
(a) (b)

Figure 2. Comparison of EON-OFDM-MMF, EON-OFDM-SMF, WSON-OFDM-MMF, WSON-MLR in a) Euro; b) US networks — cost

and power consumption.

EON-OFDM-MMF maximum EON-OFDM-SMF maximum WSON-OFDM-MMF maximum WSON-MLR maximum

EON-OFDM-MMF average EON-OFDM-SMF average WSON-OFDM-MMF average WSON-MLR average
15 18

12 15
Spectrum (THz)

Spectrum (THz)
12
9
9
6
6
3 3
0 0
2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020

(a) (b)

Figure 3. Comparison of EON-OFDM-MMF, EON-OFDM-SMF, WSON-OFDM-MMF, WSON-MLR in: a) Euro; b) US networks —

spectrum usage.

assumptions as in [12, 15]; see the details in Table 2. In partic- WSON-MLR scenario of about 47 and 54 percent for EURO
ular, the costs are expressed relative to the cost of the WDM and US networks, respectively. For the WSON-OFDM-MMF
10 Gb transponder, which is estimated to be equal to €2000 scenario the corresponding gaps are 27 and 38 percent, respec-
[12]. According to [15], the figures for WDM and O-OFDM tively. Moreover, at the beginning the EON-OFDM-SMF net-
transponders, as well as for regenerators and transponders, work scenario is the most expensive; however, in subsequent
are considered to be comparable. The fiber leasing cost is years it outperforms WSON scenarios and reveals slightly high-
assumed to be equal to €2000/km for a 20-year period (as in er cost overheads than EON-OFDM-MMF (EON-OFDM-
the methodology used in [12]). Accordingly, the relative cost MMF provides the flexibility of selecting the less costly
of a “dark” 50 GHz channel is equal to €0.625/km/year. modulation format, while EON-OFDM-SMF does not). In the
For each node (city) pair, a set of 10 candidate paths is case of power consumption, the tendency is a little bit different.
generated using the k-shortest path algorithm. Next, for each In 2012, WSON-MLR requires less power than other approach-
demand defined as a node pair and bandwidth requirement, es. The advantage of EON-OFDM-MMF is observed starting
one of the candidate paths is selected in order to minimize from 2018 and 2014 for the EURO and US networks, respec-
the particular objective. For instance, in the case of the cost in tively. In 2020, EON-OFDM-MMF considerably outperforms
EON, for each candidate path all possible modulation formats WSON scenarios; for instance the WSON-MLR approach
are analyzed taking into account path distance range, demand requires 36 and 49 percent more power, respectively, in the
bandwidth, and the cost of required transponders and regen- EURO and US networks. The gap in energy requirements
erators. Similar processing is applied in the context of energy between EON-OFDM-SMF and EON-OFDM-MMF remains
consumption and frequency usage. The frequency (slot) stable (about 10 percent) over the whole analyzed period.
assignment is made according to the AFA algorithm adopted In Fig. 3, we show the spectrum usage for both tested
for anycast routing [11]. topologies. In all analyzed periods, EON-OFDM-MMF out-
performs WSON scenarios in terms of the maximum and
EON vs. WSON average spectrum utilization. Moreover, the gap between
First, we focus on comparison of WSON and EON scenarios. these approaches increases in subsequent periods, and in 2020
In Fig. 2, we present the network cost and power consumption WSON-MLR needs more than twice the spectrum resources
for the analyzed years, 2012–2020. In the case of the cost objec- required for EON-OFDM-MMF. Also the difference between
tive, both tested topologies in general provide similar trends. EON-OFDM-MMF and EON-OFDM-SMF grows in the fol-
Particularly, in 2012, the cost of implementing WSON and lowing years. Recalling that traffic demands grow in time, the
EON approaches are comparable; however, over time the EON observed trends show that EON-OFDM-MMF is able to serve
technology appears to be more advantageous. Indeed, in 2020, the traffic with higher spectral efficiency than WSON-MLR.
WSON has significantly larger provision costs compared to the The performance of WSON-OFDM-MMF is between that of
EON-OFDM-MMF scenario, especially in the case of the the EON-OFDM-MMF and WSON-MLR scenarios.

IEEE Network • November/December 2013 49

KLINKOWSKI_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:31 PM Page 50
Cost Energy
35%
30%
25%
Anycast gain
Anycast gain
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
5 DCs 7 DCs 9 DCs
(a)
Figure 4. Anycast gain in 2020 for EON-OFDM-MMF in: a) Euro; b) US networks.
Advantages of Anycasting
As pointed out above, one of the main advantages of virtualiza-
tion techniques in the context of cloud computing is the capa-
bility to easily migrate the workloads between data centers. In
more detail, a VM is hardware independent and can be run on
various physical infrastructures. Thus, it is relatively easy to use
any data center for workloads. As a result, anycasting can be
applied to establish the traffic between users and data centers
(CD traffic). Currently, this type of traffic is related to VMs,
and customers are served by one of many data centers to real-
ize their workloads, which is equivalent to the idea of anycast-
ing defined as a one-to-one-of-many transmission. To evaluate
potential benefits of anycasting, we make the following simula-
tions. We assume that all CD demands are anycast, that is, they
can be assigned to any data center available in the network. All
traffic matrixes examined in previous simulations are also ana-
lyzed in the case when anycasting is available. To evaluate the
potential advantages from anycasting, we use an anycast gain
parameter defined as the percentage difference between results
(cost, energy, spectrum) obtained for the classical (unicast)
approach used in the previous section and results (cost, energy,
spectrum) obtained for the anycast approach. For instance, if
for a particular network topology and demand pattern in the
case of unicast approach the obtained cost is €10 million and in
the case of anycast approach the obtained cost is €8 million,
the corresponding value of anycast gain of the network cost is
calculated as (10 – 8)/8 = 25 percent. In Fig. 4, we report the
anycast gain for all examined metrics (i.e., cost, power con-
sumption, and spectrum usage) and topology scenarios. The
results correspond to EON-OFDM-MMF approach, 2020, and
to three scenarios with different numbers of data centers (five,
seven, and nine). We can easily notice that in each case the use
of anycasting brings an improvement. The anycast gain grows in
subsequent years with the increase of traffic demands; and,
since the traffic is higher is the US network than in the EURO
network, in 2020 the anycast gain is also higher in the US net-
work. Moreover, if more data centers are present in the net-
work, the anycast gain grows for all performance metrics.
Results presented in Fig. 4 confirm that anycasting can sig-
nificantly improve network performance comparrd to the clas-
sical unicast approach. However, the main challenge in the
application of anycasting in a transport network to support
cloud computing traffic is that usually the data centers and
network operators operate independently as separate business
parties. Therefore, a multilayer oriented network management
and cross-strata capabilities are indispensable to make any-
casting efficient in cloud computing scenarios.
50
Maximum spectrum Average spectrum
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
5 DCs 7 DCs 9 DCs
(b)
Future Challenges
We can discern several potential research challenges that arise
within the area of EONs and cloud computing. Most of these
challenges are currently under investigation and include:
Network design: A new optimization problem, routing and
spectrum allocation (RSA), emerges in planning and opera-
tion of EONs. The RSA problem concerns finding a routing
path and a contiguous fraction of frequency spectrum for a
connection request subject to the constraint of no frequency
overlapping (with optical paths of other connections) in net-
work links. The RSA problem is much more difficult than the
routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem encoun-
tered in WDM networks due to the spectrum contiguity con-
straint and the possibility of using various modulation formats.
Additionally, cloud computing generates new traffic patterns
with the anycasting option, which further complicates the net-
work design.
Network survivability: EONs, like the preceding WDM net-
works, must be provided with protection and restoration
mechanisms. This is a consequence of the fact that currently
network survivability, which is defined as the capability to
deliver services in the presence of failures, is one of the most
important requirements of computer networks. Survivability
mechanisms and approaches deployed for previous optical
technologies must be adapted to answer new requirements
and capabilities following from EONs and cloud computing.
In particular, such features as anycasting or squeezed protec-
tion, which allows for partial bandwidth restoration in EON,
introduce additional flexibility which can be explored by sur-
vivability mechanisms.
Cross-stratum approach: Currently cloud computing sys-
tems and transport networks are managed independently;
also, the two environments are agnostic to each other. To
improve the performance of cloud-ready transport networks,
it is highly required to develop new solutions enabling cooper-
ation between these two environments, including aspects such
as coordinated network design, cooperation between workload
scheduling in data center and network routing with anycasting
capabilities, network-aware load balancing mechanisms, server
consolidation for energy efficiency, and appropriate exten-
sions to the control plane. Some data transfers between data
centers may be scheduled for night hours when the network
load is lower. Also, dynamic and short-lasting connections can
be established in EON for workload migration between data
centers. Finally, for large data transfers, the connection bit
rate may be set up (e.g., by allocating an adequate number of
subcarriers in an O-OFDM transponder) taking into account
IEEE Network • November/December 2013
KLINKOWSKI_LAYOUT_Layout 1 11/22/13 12:31 PM Page 51
both spectrum resource availability in EON and time require-
ments for realizing the data transfer.
Conclusions
We have examined the main advantages of optical transport
networks, implementing elastic optical network technology for
provisioning of cloud computing traffic. First, we have
described the EON concept in the context of cloud computing
requirements. We have presented a typical EON architecture
that can be deployed for transport networks with both cloud
data centers and traditional data centers. Next, using both
realistic data traffic models built on Cisco traffic predictions
and two representative network topologies, we have run a
range of simulations. We have compared a conventional
WDM and two EON-based cloud-ready optical transport net-
work scenarios. In order to reflect the general trend of the
growth of overall and cloud network traffic demands and its
impact on network capacity requirements, we have analyzed
the period from 2012 to 2020. We have shown that the use of
EON architectures significantly improves the most important
performance metrics (i.e., cost, power consumption, and spec-
trum resource usage) of optical transport networks compared
to the conventional WDM approach. Moreover, with subse-
quent years the advantage of the EON approach quickly
grows.
In addition, we have shown the benefits of using the any-
casting approach to support data center traffic carried over a
transport network. Besides potential challenges related to the
difficulty of multilayer-oriented network management, which
should involve independent business parties, anycasting seems
to be an attractive solution enabling significant improvement
of network performance metrics at relatively low costs.
Based on the obtained results, we can expect that cloud
computing will become the killer application of the elastic
optical network concept.
Acknowledgments
The work was supported by the Polish National Science Cen-
tre (NCN) under Grant DEC-2012/07/B/ST7/01215. In addi-
tion, the work of Mirosław Klinkowski was supported in part
by NCN under Grant DEC-2011/01/D/ST7/05884 and by the
European Commission (EC) under the 7th Framework Pro-
gramme (FP7) project IDEALIST, Grant Agreement Number
317999, while the work of Krzysztof Walkowiak was supported
in part by EC under FP7, Coordination and Support Action,
Grant Agreement Number 316097, ENGINE — European
Research Centre of Network Intelligence for Innovation
Enhancement (http:// engine.pwr.wroc.pl/).
IEEE Network • November/December 2013
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Biographies
MIROSŁAW KLINKOWSKI (M.Klinkowski@itl.waw.pl) is an assistant professor at
the Department of Transmission and Optical Technologies at the National Insti-
tute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland. He received his M.Sc. degree
(1999) from Warsaw University of Technology, Poland, and his Ph.D. degree
(2008) from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain. He has co-authored
several book chapters and more than 90 scientific papers in leading journals
and international conferences. His research interests concentrate on algorithm
design, modeling, and optimization in communication networks.
KRZYSZTOF WALKOWIAK (krzysztof.walkowiak@pwr.wroc.pl) received his Ph.D.
and D.Sc. (habilitation) degrees in computer science from Wroclaw University
of Technology, Poland, in 2000 and 2008, respectively. Currently, he serves
as an associate professor at the Department of Systems and Computer Net-
works, Wroclaw University of Technology. He received the Best Paper Award
from the International Workshop on Design of Reliable Communication Net-
works 2009. He has published more than 160 scientific papers in internation-
al conferences and journals.
51