The need to establish wavelength-routed connections in a
service-differentiated fash- ion is becoming increasingly important due
to a variety of candidate client networks (e. g. IP, SDH/SONET, ATM) and
the requirements for Quality-of-Service (QoS) de- livery within
transport layers. Up until now, the criteria for optical network design
and operation have usually been considered independently of the
higher-layer client signals (users), i. e. without taking into account
particular requirements or constraints originating from the users'
differentiation. Wavelength routing for multi-service net- works with
performance guarantees, however, will have to do with much more than
finding a path and allocating wavelengths. The optimisation of
wavelength-routed paths will have to take into account a number of user
requirements and network con- straints, while keeping the resource
utilisation and blocking probability as low as pos- sible. In a
networking scenario where a multi-service operation in WDM networks is
assumed, while dealing with heterogeneous architectures (e. g.
technology-driven, as transparent, or regenerative), efficient
algorithms and protocols for QoS-differentiated and dynamic allocation
of physical resources will playa key role. This work examines the
development of multi-criteria wavelength routing for WDM networks where
a set of performances is guaranteed to each client network, taking into
account network properties and physical constraints.