During network planning phase, optimal network planning implemented through efficient resource allocation and static traffic demand provisioning in IP-over-elastic optical network (IP-over-EON) is significantly challenging compared with the fixed-grid wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network due to increased flexibility in IP-over-EON. Mathematical programming based optimization models used for this purpose may not provide solution for large networks due to large computational complexity. In this regard, a greedy heuristic may be used that intuitively selects traffic elements in sequence from static traffic demand matrix and provisions the traffic elements after necessary resource allocation. However, in general, such greedy heuristics offer suboptimal solutions, since appropriate traffic sequence offering the optimal performance is rarely selected. In this regard, we propose a reinforcement learning technique (in particular a Q-learning method), combined with an auxiliary graph (AG)-based energy efficient greedy method to be used for large network planning. The Q-learning method is used to decide the suitable sequence of traffic allocation such that the overall power consumption in the network reduces. In the proposed heuristic, each traffic from the given static traffic demand matrix is successively selected using the Q-learning method and provisioned using the AG-based greedy method.

We investigate the problem of fast and secure packet routing in multi-hop Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) networks. We consider a practical trusted-node setup where a QKD protocol randomly generates symmetric private key pairs over each QKD-enabled link in a network. Packets are first encrypted with the available quantum keys and then transmitted on a point-to-point basis. A fundamental problem in this setting is the design of a secure and capacity-achieving routing policy that takes into account the time-varying availability of the encryption keys and diverse physical-layer link capacities. To address this problem, we propose a new secure throughput-optimal policy called Tandem Queue Decomposition (TQD). The TQD policy is designed by incorporating the QKD process into the Universal Max Weight (UMW) routing policy. We show that the TQD policy achieves the entire secure capacity region for a broad class of traffic, including unicast, broadcast, multicast, and anycast. The TQD policy operates by reducing the problem to the generalized network flow problem without the key availability constraints over a transformed network. The throughput-optimality of the TQD policy is established using the Lyapunov stability theory by carefully analyzing the interdependent queueing process and the key-storage dynamics. Finally, we demonstrate the practical efficiency of the TQD policy over the existing routing algorithms by numerically comparing their performance on a realistic simulator built on top of the state-of-the-art OMNeT++ network simulator platform.