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Optical WDM network simulator: OWns - An Overview

Asima Nisar*
Abstract OWns (Optical WDM network simulator) is a powerful tool to simulate Optical Networks with WDM technology. This special patch is compatible with NS 2; the Discrete-Event simulator. It needs to modify OWns regarding architectural issues for extensibility, easy manipulation, platform independence for enhancement in its components and functionalities. Proper publicity is a must to convince researchers for its use. Index Terms - OWns (Optical WDM network simulator), OWAN (Optical Wide Area Networks), WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing), WRONs (Wavelength Routed Optical Networks)

1. INTRODUCTION
etworking protocols and algorithms are being developed to meet the changing operational requirements in future OWANs. Simulation is used in the study and evaluation of new protocols, and is considered a critical component of protocol design. But, a lack of uniformity in the choice of platforms for Optical WDM networks makes it difficult for researchers to exchange and compare obtained results under a common simulation environment. To address this need, a WDM network simulation tool named OWns (an extension of network simulator ns2; designed especially to simulate optical WDM networks) has been developed as a generic framework to study routing in Optical WDM networks [1]. The paper understudy is written to explain OWns with its necessary architectural details and to convince upcoming researchers for their simulation studies by OWns. Briefings of WDM, OWANs, WRONs is there in section 2 as Background with a special emphasis on the need of simulation in WRONs. In section 3, Related Work is discussed. Some of the useful findings by OWns have been mentioned here. A comparison among Optical WDM network simulators has been shown in Table 1. In section 4, architectural details of OWns with relevant diagrams and screen snapshots by OWnam for 25 nodes and 100 nodes are presented. Conclusion and Future Work is put in section 5. References are listed in section 6.

Fig. 1 WDM Optical Network Structure [2]

2. BACKGROUND
WDM is a promising approach for using the extensive bandwidth available in an optical communication medium. The concept of multiple wavelengths carrying traffic belonging to different sessions along the same physical link is called WDM. There has been significant research on realizing WDM over OWANs [5].

* Asima Nisar is the Chairperson, Dept. of Computer Science & I.T., Federal Urdu University of Arts, Sciences and Technology, Gulshan Campus, Karachi 75300, Pakistan.

2.1 WRONs: Wavelength Routed Optical Networks WRONs have great potential for better utilizing the large bandwidth provided by WDM technology. Network nodes in WRONs are capable of switching end-to-end all-optical connections, which are called lightpaths. RWA (Routing and Wavelength Assignment) provisions network resources for a lightpath. When there are no wavelength converters in the network, RWA must follow the wavelength continuity constraint such that each lightpath uses the same on all the links traversed. Since lightpaths are high capacity connections often used to carry critical customer data, the wavelength routed network must meet rigid service level agreement that requires very low blocking probability. To provide efficient dynamic wavelength provisioning in real time, the protocols designed for packet switching networks are being extended to manage WRONs. The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) is standardizing these protocols within the GMPLS (Generalized Multiple Protocol Label Switching) framework.

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These protocols shall be carefully evaluated for their feasibility and efficiency in the new context, given the circuit switching nature of WRONs as well as the wavelength continuity constraint [5].

Table 1: Simulator Comparison [4] Supporting level: H (High), M (Medium), L (Low)

ONSS

OWns H H H H

OPNET H L H M

ONDES H H L H

2.2 Need of Simulation in WRONs

Extensibility L L L H

WRONs operate as OCS (Optical Circuit Switched) network without using optical buffer. However, WRONs have problems of network inefficiency caused by optical constraints and imbalanced usage of network resources. From many years, optical networking engineers and researchers have contributed huge endeavors to improve the network efficiency in WRONs. They have been proposed various heuristic algorithms to reduce the complexity of these problems. Till now, simulation plays an important role to solve these problems with a cost effective method to design and evaluate the behavior of WRONs [4].

Open Source Publicity Specialized in Optical Network Supporting TCP/IP Optical Network components Including algorithms Easy manipulation Platform independence Program Language

L M

H H

H H

L H

3. RELATED WORK
There is a little work on simulation platforms which is specialized for developing, exchanging, and comparing results obtained from their simulation in optical networks [4].

M H L

H L L

H L L

H H H

3.1 Comparison among Simulators for Optical WDM Networks

A comparison is made among simulators for Optical WDM networks on the basis of three supporting levels namely; H (High), M (Medium), and L (Low) in Table 1. Salient features of OWns over other simulators can be seen clearly. Optical Network Simulation System (ONSS) has been developed in topology design and wavelength assignment given a physical topology. Sivalingam et al. developed Optical WDM network simulator (OWns) as an extension to the network simulator ns2. OPNET (OPtimum NETwork Performance) provides a set of optical network components and the basic algorithms to perform optical network simulation but with complex configuration usages. Choi et al. developed ONDES (Optical Network Design and Evaluation Simulator) which is specialized in optical network topology design and performance evaluation in the WRON environment. Some others are commercialized products. Some have limited capability to develop various algorithms, and some others provide a big overhead to develop algorithms due to the unified platform focused on the modeling of the high-level protocols [4]. Following is a list of Optical WDM network simulators, namely; ONSS, OWns, OPNET, and ONDES.

Visual C++

C++ and OTcl

C++

Java

3.2 Researches with OWns

Many researchers have been used OWns to run simulations for WRONs. Some findings are mentioned here:

1. Problem Area: Different RWA algorithms (First Fit, Most Used, Least Used, and Random) have been discussed in context of DWDM technology [6]. Simulations are performed for a partial mesh 25 node network with wavelength conversion and without wavelength conversion, by using OWns. Findings: The best performing algorithm is Most-used giving lowest blocking probability while random is the worst and First Fit the easiest to implement. In simulations with wavelength conversion, blocking probability is reduced tremendously while link utilization is high because fewer requests are getting blocked [6].

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2. Problem Area: Performance of the proposed RFTR (Reliable Fault Tolerant Routing) algorithm [7] is examined against an existing scheme for mesh 8-node network by using OWns. Findings: Based on the simulation results, it is shown that RFTR algorithm reduces the blocking probability and latency (delay) while increasing the throughput and link utilization [7]. 3.3 OWns: Architecture and Layers
The OWns architecture encompasses the key characteristics of WDM networks including optical switching nodes, multi-wavelength links, and RWA (Routing and Wavelength Assignment) algorithms. OWns adopts a certain level of abstraction to build the specific switching schemes of WDM networks (e.g. circuit switching) based on the packet switching framework of ns2. A new class of traffic source termed the session traffic is implemented to generate traffic sessions suitable for WDM circuit switching simulations. The traffic generator randomizes source and destination pairs according to their uniform distribution. By default, all generated multi-wavelength links have the same wavelength number and all wavelengths have the same bandwidth [1].

3.4 OWns: Components and Functionalities OWns circuit-switched architecture is composed of routing module, WA module, optical switching nodes, and the multi-wavelength links.

Fig. 3 OWns Components Organization and Interactions [1]

Optical switching node, multi-wavelength link, routing module, and WA (Wavelength Assignment) module are implemented as WDMNode, duplex-FiberLink, RouteLogic/ Wavelength, and WAssignLogic objects respectively. Multi-channel structures of multi-wavelength links are centrally maintained in the Logical Layer. WA module works along with routing module to compute wavelength assignment, set up lightpaths, and construct the virtual topology. Relying on these results, optical nodes forward incoming traffic to the corresponding next hops through multi-wavelength links [1].

3.5 OWns: Scenario Generation tool

Below mentioned range of parameters would definitely help to form a common simulation platform for researchers. OWns provides a definite support for modeling of WDM network characteristics, generating random network topology with (Exponential, CBR, and Pareto) traffic patterns, evaluating performance of new protocols, and making possible to visualize simulation events/sub-events with an option of extensibility in all of its features. For this, OWns has two scenario generation tools, namely topology generator and traffic generator. Topology generator creates random topologies according to a set of specified parameters with a definite number of wavelengths. Traffic generator generates random traffic source destination pairs, according to specified traffic models and parameters [1].

Fig. 2 OWns architecture and layers [1]

OWns view the physical and logical topology of WDM networks being implemented as the physical layer and the logical layer respectively. It uses C++ to implement efficient building blocks (such as nodes, links, traffic models, and existing protocol suites) as well as transmission mechanisms, and a scripting language OTcl, an object-oriented extension of Tcl as a glue (simulation description languages that configure simulation scenarios). The current version of OWns supports circuit switching [1].

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Following is the list of simulation parameters provided by OWns, shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Simulation Parameters [3]

Topology Seed to generate Random topology Wavelength Routing Protocol Wavelength Assignment Protocol Total no. of nodes Nodes Connection Probability Link Wavelength Number Link Bandwidth Link Delay Wavelength Conversion Factor Wavelength Conversion Distance Wavelength Conversion Time Link Utilization Sample Interval Traffic Density Total Session-Traffics in network Session Traffic Load Traffic Arrival Rate Traffic Holding Time Packet Size Session Traffic Packet Arrival Rate Traffic Type Expoo Traffic Average Burst Time Expoo Traffic Average Idle Time Max. Traffic Requests Number

Random 98765 WDM Static First Fit 25, 50, 100 0.03 16, 32, 48, 64 16 Mb 10ms 0.5 4 0.024 0.5 0.6 10 0.3 Erlangs 0.5 1.0 100 - 1000 bytes 1 Mb Exponential, CBR, Pareto 0.7 0.1 1000

OWnam is designed to visualize WDM network scenarios for circuit-driven environment. Mainly, it has two components, one is events monitor and other is virtual topology statistics. Event monitor is used to capture and display dynamic events that occur in virtual topologies. Virtual topology statistics is used to visualize the dynamic information of virtual topology construction involving the current state of virtual topology, the state of established lightpaths, and wavelength usage on multi-wavelength links [1]. Following are the reflections of screen snapshots for 25 nodes and 100 nodes WDM network topology by OWnam with its terminological interpretation. Fig. 4 shows the 25-node WDM network topology generated by the topology generator along with a snapshot of the simulation run. The Exponential session traffic pairs are randomly distributed amongst all nodes, which are displayed by the packet flows in OWnam.

Fig. 4 Visual form of Simulation instance by OWnam for WRON with 25 nodes [1]

In Fig. 4, for instance at 0.777645s, a lightpath is created for traffic session 109 from node 1 to node 17 and the lightpath is established on the shortest path (path 1) between the source and the destination without wavelength conversion [1].

3.6 OWnam: Optical WDM network animator nam (network animator) is an animation tool that reads the trace output generated by ns and produces a visualization. A specific extension to nam, OWnam, is being developed to address the needs of visualizing WDM network simulation scenarios based on OWns. In OWnam, each traffic flow is still visualized by the conventional packet animation approach supported by nam.

Fig. 5 Visual form of Simulation instance by OWnam for WRON with 100 nodes [3]

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Fig. 5 shows the 100 nodes WDM network topology generated by the topology generator along with a snapshot of the simulation run. In this snapshot shown in Fig. 5, for instance at 461.350770s, a lightpath is created for traffic session 7 from node 5 to node 52 and lightpath is established on the shortest path (path 1) between source and destination without wavelength conversion [3].

4. WORKING WITH OWNS

As NS-2 is a discrete event simulator, so being a special patch of NS-2, OWns has nothing to do with the simulation instance timer, consequently.

4.1 OWns: Installation tips and useful commands On Virtual Machine with Red Hat Linux 6.2 platform, OWns can be patched up only with NS-allinone-2.1b6 version, successfully.
As, OWns is compatible only with an older version of Red Hat Linux 6.2, so some useful Linux commands to interact with OWns are mentioned here for users convenience. After login to virtual machine, just turn on the terminal emulation program. Root directory will be open with command prompt. Following are some of the commands which are useful for a simulation run and getting the result file after running a complete simulation instance. ls (to list-in all contents into root directory) gedit owns_demo.tcl (to set simulation parameters) ns owns_demo.tcl (to run demo topology, topology generator generates random topology and by OWnam its visual output can be seen on screen) cat owns_demo.res (to view result file after completion of simulation instance) exit (to exit from terminal emulation program) For the screen snapshots, just press; (alt + fn + prt sc) then by using edit option, paste it by using Paint utility from accessories.

Fig. 6 Output Window of the Simulator OWns

5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

There is still room for further research as future work to improve OWns functionalities regarding performance evaluation and architectural issues.

5.1 Future Work regarding Performance Evaluation Issues

The same simulation study can be repeated with Pareto session traffic for circuit switching networks by using OWns. Further, more realistic traffic sources for OWANs with packet switching such as self-similar traffic source with LRD (Long Range Dependence) will definitely be integrated in OWns to achieve valuable simulation results [3].

5.2 Future Work regarding Architectural Issues of OWns

Novel switching schemes such as photonic packet switching and multi-protocol lambda switching need to be implemented in the OWns framework. Also, support for multicasting in optical WDM environment needs to be provided. Furthermore, the basic OWns framework needs to be extended to provide support for QoS schemes such as integrated services and differentiated services [1].

4.1 Performance Metrics by OWns After a complete simulation instance, to evaluate performance metrics use the following command:
cat filename.res (to view the Result file)

Simulation output would be there on screen like this, shown in the following:

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6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Im thankful to Mr. Jamil Ahmed, a great Linux Trainer in CTTC Institute (CPLS Microsoft Gold Partner) for his acute help to clear my Linux concepts especially about its installation on virtual machine for running simulations and preparation of relevant test bed with OWns. Im also thankful to the Linux Instructor Mr. Tayyab, Managers of CTTC Institute Mr. Asif Hussain, and Mr. Javaid Abbas for their kind support. Really, its a good experience to join CTTC Institute for Linux training.

Asima Nisar is born on 06th. of March,

1977. She is the Chairperson - Department of Computer Science & IT, Federal Urdu University of Arts, Sciences & Technology, Gulshan Campus, Karachi, Pakistan. She is the Ph.D. (Computer Science) candidate of Hamdard University, GSESIT (Graduate School of Engineering, Sciences & Information Technology), Karachi Pakistan from Spring 2011. She did her MS (Computer Science) from PAF-KIET in Summer - 2010. She did her M.Sc. Computer Science from NED University of Engineering & Technology in 2001. The paper understudy is her Seventh research paper. Her research interests include: Exploring Different Aspects of High Speed Networks.

7. REFERENCES
[1] Bo Wen and Nilesh M. Bhide and Ramakrishna K. Shenai and Krishna M. Sivalingam, Optical Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) Network Simulator (OWns): Architecture and Performance Studies, First Workshop on Optical Networks, Dallas, TX Jan. 2000 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.13.6944 [2] Ning Zhang, Hong Bao, Design of Protection Technology in WDM Optical Network, IEEE, DOI 10.1109/ICNDS.2009.121 [3] Asima Nisar, Effects of Packet Size and Wavelength Numbers on Delay and Link Utilization in WRONs by using OWns, Journal of Computing, Volume 2, Issue 8, August 2010, ISSN 2151-9617, pp (43-48) [4] Min Ho Park and Jin Seek Choi, An Implementation of Optical Network Design and Evaluation Simulator for Wavelength Routed Optical Networks, Applied Telecommunications Symposium, 1-56555-2768, pp (143 - 148) [5] Byrav Ramamurthy and Ashok Ramakrishnan, Virtual Topology Reconfiguration of Wavelength-Routed Optical WDM Networks, IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, 10.1109/ GLOCOM.2000 .891340, pp (1269-1275) Volume 2 [6] Ramla Ahmad, Performance Analysis of Wavelength Assignment Algorithms in IP Over DWDM Networks, IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2002, pp (795-798) [7] G. Ramesh and S. Sundara Vadivelu, A Reliable and Fault-Tolerant Routing for Optical WDM Networks, International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security, Volume 6, No. 2, 2009, ISSN 1947-5500, pp(48-54)

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