Automatically Switched Transport Network (ASTN) has many capabilities, such as dynamic connection/routing, that make it attractive for traffic engineering and optimization of next generation large scale optical mesh backbones. With increasing traffic demand spanning large geographic areas, optical mesh networks need to grow rapidly in terms of degree of meshing, bandwidth, and number of nodes. This translates (among others) into: (1) an increasing broadcast traffic and message load at each node in the ASTN control plane, especially during links or nodes failures, where dynamic route computation is required. Maintaining the stability of the routing protocol, and preserving service quality (restoration, network-wide delay, etc) as the mesh network grows larger becomes a key requirement, (2) significant memory, bandwidth and processing requirements to maintain and update network topology databases, and (3) additional operational considerations for connections availability, network latency, fault isolation, link maintenance and correlation of failures. This paper addresses the unique operational requirements in this type of large meshed networks environment and provides network designers with practical solutions to address scalability when building large ASTN-based mesh networks.

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[11] SONET Dual-Fed Unidirectional Path Switched Ring (UPSR) Equipment Generic Criteria , Telcordia GR–1400–CORE, no. 2, January 1999. Faouzi Kamounreceived his BEng, MSc, and PhD degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Concordia University, Canada, and an MBA degree in management from McGill University, Canada. He joined the College of Information Technology (CIT) of Dubai University College in September 2002, as an assistant professor. Prior to joining Dubai University College, he has been with Nortel Networks, Montreal, Canada since 1995, prior to his departure in 2002, he was a senior technical advisor in the Hi-CAP Optical Networks Division. His research interests are in the design, modeling, performance analysis and business appraisal of next generation communications and sensors networks. He was the recipient of Nortel Networks CEO top-talent awards in 2000 and 2001, the Concordia University Graduate Fellowship from 1991 to 1993, and the electrical engineering medal for most outstanding graduating student at Concordia University in 1988. Mohamed El-Torkyreceived a BSc in electro-physics and a BSc in mathematics (statistics) both from the University of Alexandria, Egypt. Currently, he is a telecommunications consultant in the Province of Quebec. Prior to that, he spent 20 years with Nortel Networks, Montreal, Canada, where he was involved in various R&D projects. He has over twenty years of diversified industry experience in digital transmission systems, optical networks planning, survivability and availability analysis.