Abstract
As the trend of increased reconfigurability emerges in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks, lightpath establishment would be moved from static toward dynamic regimes. Therefore, our interest is in real-time traffic where connection requests arrive dynamically and last for a random holding time if granted. This paper concerns itself with the performance of adaptive routing algorithms in wavelengths-routed networks with wavelength conversion capability. We first investigate several adaptive routing strategies, including the shortest path strategy, the least-loaded path strategy, and the proposed weighted-shortest path strategy. We then develop an analytical model to estimate blocking performance and compare the analyses with simulations. The numerical results show that the weighted-shortest path strategy can enhance blocking performance and fairly distribute load among the links.