Multiservice QoS-Enabled MAC for Optical Burst Switching

The emergence of a broad range of network-driven applications (e.g., multimedia, online gaming) brings in the need for a network environment able to provide multiservice capabilities with diverse quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. In this paper, a medium access control protocol is proposed to support multiple services and QoS levels in optical burst-switched mesh networks without wavelength conversion. The protocol provides two different access mechanisms, queue-arbitrated and prearbitrated for connectionless and connection-oriented burst transport, respectively. It has been evaluated through extensive simulations and its simplistic form makes it very promising for implementation and deployment. Results indicate that the protocol can clearly provide a relative quality differentiation for connectionless traffic and guarantee null (or negligible, and thus acceptable) burst loss probability for a wide range of network (or offered) load while ensuring low access delay for the higher-priority traffic. Furthermore, in the multiservice scenario mixing connectionless and connection-oriented burst transmissions, three different prearbitrated slot scheduling algorithms are evaluated, each one providing a different performance in terms of connection blocking probability. The overall results demonstrate the suitability of this architecture for future integrated multiservice optical networks

Multicast traffic aggregation in MPLS-based VPN networks

This article gives an overview of the current practical approaches under study for a scalable implementation of multicast in layer 2 and 3 VPNs over an IP-MPLS multiservice network. These proposals are based on a well-known technique: the aggregation of traffic into shared trees to manage the forwarding state vs. bandwidth saving trade-off. This sort of traffic engineering mechanism requires methods to estimate the resources needed to set up a multicast shared tree for a set of VPNs. The methodology proposed in this article consists of studying the effect of aggregation obtained by random shared tree allocation on a reference model of a representative network scenario.Publicad

Spare capacity modelling and its applications in survivable iP-over-optical networks

As the interest in IP-over-optical networks are becoming the preferred core network architecture, survivability has emerged as a major concern for network service providers; a result of the potentially huge traffic volumes that will be supported by optical infrastructure. Therefore, implementing recovery strategies is critical. In addition to the traditional recovery schemes based around protection and restoration mechanisms, pre-allocated restoration represents a potential candidate to effect and maintain network resilience under failure conditions. Preallocated restoration technique is particularly interesting because it provides a trade-off in terms of recovery performance and resources between protection and restoration schemes. In this paper, the pre-allocated restoration performance is investigated under single and dual-link failures considering a distributed GMPLSbased IP/WDM mesh network. Two load-based spare capacity optimisation methods are proposed in this paper; Local Spare Capacity Optimisation (LSCO) and Global Spare Capacity Optimisation (GSCO)

Deliverable JRA1.1: Evaluation of current network control and management planes for multi-domain network infrastructure

This deliverable includes a compilation and evaluation of available control and management architectures and protocols applicable to a multilayer infrastructure in a multi-domain Virtual Network environment.The scope of this deliverable is mainly focused on the virtualisation of the resources within a network and at processing nodes. The virtualization of the FEDERICA infrastructure allows the provisioning of its available resources to users by means of FEDERICA slices. A slice is seen by the user as a real physical network under his/her domain, however it maps to a logical partition (a virtual instance) of the physical FEDERICA resources. A slice is built to exhibit to the highest degree all the principles applicable to a physical network (isolation, reproducibility, manageability, ...). Currently, there are no standard definitions available for network virtualization or its associated architectures. Therefore, this deliverable proposes the Virtual Network layer architecture and evaluates a set of Management- and Control Planes that can be used for the partitioning and virtualization of the FEDERICA network resources. This evaluation has been performed taking into account an initial set of FEDERICA requirements; a possible extension of the selected tools will be evaluated in future deliverables. The studies described in this deliverable define the virtual architecture of the FEDERICA infrastructure. During this activity, the need has been recognised to establish a new set of basic definitions (taxonomy) for the building blocks that compose the so-called slice, i.e. the virtual network instantiation (which is virtual with regard to the abstracted view made of the building blocks of the FEDERICA infrastructure) and its architectural plane representation. These definitions will be established as a common nomenclature for the FEDERICA project. Other important aspects when defining a new architecture are the user requirements. It is crucial that the resulting architecture fits the demands that users may have. Since this deliverable has been produced at the same time as the contact process with users, made by the project activities related to the Use Case definitions, JRA1 has proposed a set of basic Use Cases to be considered as starting point for its internal studies. When researchers want to experiment with their developments, they need not only network resources on their slices, but also a slice of the processing resources. These processing slice resources are understood as virtual machine instances that users can use to make them behave as software routers or end nodes, on which to download the software protocols or applications they have produced and want to assess in a realistic environment. Hence, this deliverable also studies the APIs of several virtual machine management software products in order to identify which best suits FEDERICA’s needs.Postprint (published version