Converged Services over MPLS

Andrew G. Malis, Tellabs

This article has discussed the development of
converged network services over MPLS-based
backbones. The popularity of this approach is
evident in the marketplace: in 2005 alone,
MPLS-based VPN services produced over US$4
billion in revenue for service providers worldwide.
Almost every major data networking service
provider has either deployed MPLS or is in
the process of deploying MPLS, and a number
have publicly announced their plans to completely
converge their services over MPLS networks.
Some of the better known of these service
providers include AT&T, Bell Canada, BellSouth, Broadwing, BT, Cable & Wireless, China
Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, Equant, France
Telecom, Infonet, NTT, Saavis, Sprint, Telecom
Italia, Telstra, and Verizon.
These and literally hundreds of other service
providers are using most, if not all, of the MPLSbased
mechanisms described in this article,
including MPLS traffic engineering, layer 3
VPNs to provide business IP services, and layer
1 and 2 VPNs to provide converged TDM, frame
relay, ATM, and Ethernet services. The fact that
MPLS is being used to provide these services is
not always readily apparent; for example, the
traffic engineering procedures in use by a service
provider are often not publicly disclosed for
competitive reasons. In other cases, MPLS-based
services have public brand names, such as IPEnabled
Frame Relay or Metro Ethernet, that
do not include MPLS in their name, even though
they use MPLS mechanisms to provide the services.
For further investigation, a selection of
freely available white papers on MPLS technology
and deployments can be found online at the
MPLS Resource Center, http://www.mplsrc.com/.

Delay-Margin based Traffic Engineering

for
MPLS-DiffServ Networks
Mohamed Ashour and Tho Le-Ngoc
In this paper, we presented a delay-margin based TE approach
to provide end-to-end QoS in MPLS networks using DiffServ at
the link level. Three traffic engineering algorithms are developed
using a nonlinear formulation of the TE problem in the form
of end-to-end delay margin. The algorithms provide more control
dimensions of the network, while keeping the simple DiffServ service provisioning architecture. Simulations show that
the end-to-end class adjustment and the weight adjustment algorithms
can be used separately to enhance the performance of
existing routing techniques. In conjunction with the route configuration
algorithm, they further increase the network performance.
Approximations were also proposed for a possible distributed
traffic engineering structure.

Demonstration of All-Photonic Spectral

Label-Switching for Optical MPLS
Networks
Reuven E. Gordon, Member, IEEE, and Lawrence R. Chen, Member, IEEE
We have demonstrated a simple, all-photonic LSS to switch
weight four, spectral labels (concurrent quadruple wavelength
conversion) in an LSR of an optical MPLS network. The static
TF plots indicate that a noisy input label with small ER would
be switched to a clean, amplified, output label. Label-switching
and CR improvement was confirmed by the step response plots.
For slowly modulated labels (as used in the step response), this
corresponds to reamplification and reshaping (2R) regeneration.
To negate label inversion arising from XGM in the LSS, one
possible simple modification could be made, as shown in the
block diagram of Fig. 4. In this setup, spectral label is input
to an XGM-based multiple-input to single-output wavelength
converter. The output control wavelength is sent to an LSS
modified to accept a single input. By using a dedicated control
channel in the intermediate step with sufficient power to saturate
SOA , wavelength overlap (and thus, ER degradation) would
not occur in switching between label and label .
To switch higher weight spectral labels, additional ports
could be selected in the AWG, or several, simple LSSs could
operate in parallel, where each unit converts a unique section
of the label. Tunable label-switching should also be possible by
using tunable wavelength-selective components (for example,
a wavelength-selective microoptoelectromechanical systems
switch) in the SFRL.