Orchestration of Connectivity Resources in Elastic Optical Networks

This thesis provides a description of the evolution of optical networks over the years, starting from the first point-to-point communications, moving to Wavelength Division Multiplexed networks which led to the implementations of nowadays Elastic Optical Networks. The work proceeds with the description of the development of an EON simulator that we used to investigate the performance of several spectrum allocation algorithms with the possibility to exploit wavelength conversion. The current implementations comprehend different version of the already known First Fit and Random Fit algorithms and a novel approach that we called Longest Fit. The first two models present three versions each, one that performs link-by-link spectrum assignment called base, one that introduces the spectrum blocks logic called best-effort and one that allows backtracking in allocations called stubborn. Longest Fit instead only has best-effort and stubborn versions. Each of these has also a special parameter that allows or denies the possibility to break spectrum blocks. Simulations are provided on both a custom and a real-world network topology.