Planning and operating flexible optical networks: Algorithmic issues and tools

We discuss the basic algorithmic issues in planning and operating flexible optical networks, highlighting the challenges and differences from fixed-grid WDM networks. We also overview commercially available planning and operation tools, which (expectedly) lack support for flexible optical networks at the moment, as flexible technologies are not yet deployed in real networks. To fill this need we present the Mantis tool. Mantis' modular architecture provides fast running times, efficient and fault-tolerant usage of computation resources, and execution as both a desktop application and a cloud software-as-a-service.