Itinerant routing in elastic optical networks

We state a new problem of \emph{itinerant routing} in elastic optical networks, which we define as the establishment and reconfiguration of an \emph{itinerant connection}. In an itinerant connection, one of the connection end nodes is allowed to change. Itinerant routing could also be considered a form of connection restoration, where a connection has to be restored to a different end node. With the introduction of new mobile-network architectures, the progressing integration of wireless and optical networks, the continuing growth of wireless high-bitrate services, and the eventual deployment of elastic optical networks, there is a need to support this itinerant routing in the elastic optical networks. We present and discuss two major use cases of the itinerant routing, and propose a \emph{novel reconfiguration algorithm}. Our algorithm does not deteriorate the network performance, and requires half as many new links to configure as the shortest-path reconfiguration algorithm. The performance evaluation was carried out with 46800 simulation runs using randomly-generated realistic transport networks.