Net2plan: an open source network planning tool for bridging the gap between academia and industry

Pablo Pavon-Marino, Jose-Luis Izquierdo-Zaragoza
2015 IEEE Network  
The plethora of network planning results published in top-ranked journals is a good sign of the success of the network planning research field. Unfortunately, it is often difficult for network carriers and ISPs to reproduce these investigations on their networks. This is partially because of the absence of a software planning tool meeting the requirements of industry and academia, which can make the adaptation and validation of planning algorithms less time consuming. We motivate how a paradigm
more » ... shift to an open-source view of the network planning field emphasizes the power of distributed peer-review and transparency to create high-quality software at an accelerated pace and lower cost. Then, we present Net2Plan, an open-source Java-based software tool. Built on top of a technology-agnostic network representation, it automates the elaboration of performance evaluation tests for user-defined or built-in network design algorithms, network recovery schemes, connection-admissioncontrol systems, or dynamic provisioning algorithms for time-varying traffic. The Net2Plan philosophy enforces code reutilization as an open repository of network planning resources. In this paper, a case study in a multilayer IP-over-WDM network is presented to illustrate the potential of Net2Plan. We cover standard CAPEX studies, and more advanced aspects such as a resilience analysis of the network under random independent failures and disaster scenarios and an energy efficiency assessment of "green" schemes that switch off parts of the network during low load periods. All the planning algorithms in this paper are publicly available on the Net2Plan website. Following this paradigm, we developed Net2Plan [2]. Net2Plan is an open-source (multilayer) network planning tool, and a repository of planning resources. Net2Plan is not constrained to any specific network technology, and is adaptable to any of them. It allows users to rapidprototype their own algorithms, or use the provided built-in ones. Users can evaluate their designs using either automatic report generation or post-analysis tools for network resilience, connection-admission-control and time-varying traffic resource allocation. Net2Plan enforces code reusability in two ways. The open-source nature enables code reutilization and public validation. The technology-agnostic nature permits reusing algorithms and studies for similar problems appearing in different network technologies. We believe that identifying these similarities permits incorporating well-known results in "old" technologies, to improve and speed-up the development of algorithms for "new" technologies. Net2Plan Net2Plan is an open-source Java-based software, publicly and freely available to download from its website [2] . It is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
doi:10.1109/mnet.2015.7293311 fatcat:owv2l7nmrvf6xaxdgmjded7dnq