NeTS: Small: Network Failure Recovery Employing Network Coding

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

Facilities used in long-distance communications networks incorporate mechanisms to overcome failures, however, these result in the use of spare capacity (redundancy) to achieve relatively short restoration times (about 50 ms). Therefore, some providers have implemented proprietary network failure restoration techniques with a smaller degree of redundancy and with a larger restoration time. Restoration from network failures is particularly difficult for networks that employ routers and the Internet Protocol. This research is applying using network coding techniques for hitless (transparent to the user) restoration of services in the networks of future. The research is investigating topology and code design algorithms for actual networks, to understand their performance, to compare restoration time and extra capacity requirements of the new approach with conventional techniques, and to discover new protocols to implement the new technique. In this work, failure recovery design using network coding will be implemented in two steps. In the first step, for a given network, a failure recovery network will be designed using a linear program. In the second step, the needed Galois field size will be determined. The new hitless restoration technology will be compared with conventional failure recovery techniques using disjoint paths in terms of spare capacity, restoration speed, and operation complexity. The new technique will also enable packet loss recovery in the network, as opposed to on an end-to-end basis as performed conventionally. A special implementation for wireless networks is also under development. The successful outcome of this research can have a broad impact on future networks.