Experimental demonstration of a lightpath management procedure based on a hierarchical architecture

System margin reduction, performance prediction, and multi-vendor interoperability in future optical networks will require proper and effective monitoring functionalities of optical network services. This interest in monitoring features is driving new investigations on the management plane and procedures, and also targeting emerging protocols such as network configuration (NETCONF), which natively supports management functionalities. This paper presents the experimental demonstration of a management procedure for lightpaths in optical networks based on a hierarchical management plane. NETCONF is adopted for subscription to alarms and for alarm notification at the different layers in the hierarchy. YANG models are presented to configure monitoring entities in the network. The proposed system can be applied to both single- and multi-domain networks. The proposed solution is experimentally demonstrated in a control plane testbed including a hierarchical management plane.