Wave tunnel - Accurately designing deployable optical networks

Network design tools are routinely used to design optical networks that can carry a set of demands at the least cost. While there are several planning tools in existence, they lack either algorithm quality, or usability, or operational effectiveness of the designed networks. We have developed WaveTunnel, a customer-facing planning tool for designing wave division multiplexed (WDM) networks that addresses these issues. It includes detailed equipment modeling that leads to accurate cost models and novel algorithms for validating the designed network against the routing algorithms used for network provisioning, and selecting add-drop multiplexers versus cross connects. It offers simulation capabilities and works in conjunction with an operational network. The software is easily extensible to new networking technologies and design algorithms, due to the use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) and component models. This document presents an overview of the tool and describes in detail the techniques used to realize accurate network designs. (C) 2003 Lucent Technologies Inc.