Service differentiation in IP/MPLS over ASON/GMPLS networks

There is a general agreement that the future
infrastructure for broadband communications will consist
of Automatically Switched Optical Networks (ASONs) controlled
by the Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching
(GMPLS) control plane. Due to the convergence of most
services on the Internet Protocol (IP) layer, ASON/GMPLS
networks need to provide transport for a variety of applications
having different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements.
This implies that the Differentiated Service paradigm, which
improves the QoS in pure IP networks, needs to be extended
to the new underlying infrastructure. This article proposes
and compares three schemes for the service differentiation in
IP/MPLS over ASON/GMPLS networks. Simulation results
demonstrate that a fair trade-off between QoS and resource
utilization is achieved when combining routing policy differentiation
(RPD), virtual topology differentiation (VTD),
and virtual topology sharing (VTS) techniques. The RPD
technique decides on the multilayer routing policy to apply
depending on theClass of Service (CoS). TheVTDtechnique
transports different CoS over different independent virtual
topologies. The VTS technique introduces a certain degree
of resource sharing among the different virtual topologies.

Publication year:2009

Keywords:Multilayer traffic engineering, Integrated routing, Service differentiation