Conference Paper

This paper provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of the impact of deploying state-of-the-art high capacity and flexible line interfaces instead of lower cost optical interfaces, which natively target data center interconnection (DCI), in metro and regional networks. With that aim, the media channel (MCh) formats supported in both cases are introduced and a set of MCh provisioning algorithms to mimic network operation over multiple periods is described. Simulation results obtained in two reference networks highlight the hardware savings and extended amount of carried traffic enabled by the former type of interfaces. Moreover, it provides insight on the (i) relevance of selecting the most suitable MCh provisioning algorithm depending on network topology and traffic pattern and on the (ii) impact of implementing lower cost interfaces having different performance and cost trade-offs.