Real-time performance awareness is one among the many when it comes to recent trends in optical transport networks. Driving the network towards an optimum operating point compared to end of life (EoL) margin stacked over dimensioned networks are some of the key benefits of such real time performance data. The authors exploit the availability of such real time data, which is fairly static over a shorter time window, to be used for network
restoration. This paper does a comparison between two network modes where in (i) restoration path and resources are calculated with offline planned EoL performance data and (ii) restoration path and resources are calculated
with real time performance data. As the later one excludes margin stacking for future uncertainties (assumptions on fiber cuts, fiber aging, component variations, component aging, model accuracy limitations), the typically
longer restoration paths can exploit higher order modulation formats, in some cases matching those employed in the working paths. It is shown that network operators can thus benefit from reduced restoration resources and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).