Unified Network Description

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TCOM
Unified Network Description
Sébastien Rumley Cristian Bungarzeanu EPFL
Telecommunication Laboratory Lausanne,
Switzerland sebastien.rumley_at_epfl.ch
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Todays situation in network description files

• Raw data text file
• Description in text files, easy to parse
• but difficult to read for human eye
• Risky to edit manually
• No unified description format
• Depends on the program used to drive the
  simulation
• Filters have to be developed to allow
  interoperability between formats

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Our proposal

• A unique and well defined document format to
  describe networks
• XML based to take advantage of existing tools
• Easy to consult, with a text editor or, better,
  with a web browser
• Hand modification is possible, like web page
• Extensible
• For specific data related to a specific
  application
• For some simulation or optimisation results

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Core structure description
Element
Document
Mandatory attribute
Optional attribute
id
positionX
positionY
label
layer
orig
dest
light_paths
length
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An example

• lt?xml version"1.0" encoding"UTF-8"?gt
• ltnetworkgt
• ltmain_descriptiongt
• ltlayer id"physical"gt
• ltnode id"0" positionX"190"
  positionY"50" label"Lausanne"/gt
• ltnode id"1" positionX"69"
  positionY"128" label"Amsterdam"/gt
• ltnode id"2" positionX"322"
  positionY"133" label"Rome"/gt
• ltlink orig"0" dest"1" length"150"/gt
• ltlink orig"1" dest"2" length"120"/gt
• lt/layergt
• ltlayer id"demand"gt
• ltlink orig"0" dest"1" light_paths"2"/gt
• ltlink orig"0" dest"2" light_paths"3"/gt
  
• ltlink orig"1" dest"2" light_paths"5"/gt
• lt/layergt
• lt/main_descriptiongt
• lt/networkgt

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Viewing

• File may be viewed using an Internet browser

• Or using our "Displayer"

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Extensible

• Add other elements beside the main_description
  element

• Add other attributes or sub-elements to node,
  link, or layer elements

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Coming soon

• Format syntax file (DTD or XML schema)
• Format checker (to download or on-line)