Why?

Path Computation is a main requirement for Traffic Engineered network, it can be used to get the shortest/less expensive path in a network as well as getting protection such as 1+1 paths. Path computation became a discriminative and critical key feature between optical equipment.

Here after 2 different path results for a simple one metric cost network:

Node disjoint, optimal cost but not hop count

Link Diverse Node algorithm


MARBEN™ Constrained Path Computation Library

MARBEN™ Constrained Path Computation (CPC) library conforms with simple shortest path computation (SPF) as well as 2-diverse paths computation. It supports both node- and link- diversity.

The MARBEN™ CPC provides useful functionalities based on inputs from major optical manufacturers. Thus the computation provides minimal overlapping 2-diverse solutions in case of 1-cut topology. It also provides solutions with or without identifications of the links and pseudo-nodes of Lan identifier. Users can prune preventively nodes and links due to user's specific consideration. They can also negotiate the final result allowing it to refuse some solutions based on any criteria not reflected in the metrics.

The MARBEN™ CPC interface is complete enough to allow users to provide their own metrics functions, hence allowing the user to adapt the metrics to data not reported as the metrics in the TE database.

The key features are

• Multithread-safe.
• Running as application process, it can run with low priority to keep the CPU available for network processing.
• Fickle trace mechanisms.

The MARBEN™ CPC library can be delivered as an independent library with a public interface to populate the topology or as a natural affinity with the MARBEN™ TE DevKit.