Generation of a reference network for Ireland and its contribution to the design of an optical network architecture

Realistic reference networks are critical for all techno-economic evaluations in the design of an optical network architecture. As this information was not publicly available for Ireland, we generated such a reference network. In this paper we elaborate on the challenges faced during the generation and present some statistics. We also show how this is used in the design of an optical architecture for the same country. The level of detail of the reference network needed varies according to the layer of the architecture that is being designed. In this paper we show how the original reference network is reduced while maintaining important properties for the design of the architecture. We also elicit geotypes from the structure of the reference network and discus the importance of this computation in the design of the optical distribution network.