Etherlay: An Overlay Enhancement for Metro Ethernet Networks (original) (raw)

Cross-over spanning trees Enhancing metro ethernet resilience and load balancing

2007

The economics and familiarity of Ethernet technology is motivating the vision of wide-scale adoption of Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN). Despite the progress made by the community on additional Ethernet standardization and commercialization of the first generation of MEN, the fundamental technology does not meet the expectations that carriers have traditionally held in terms of network resiliency and load management. These two important features of MEN have been addressed in this paper.

Fast Failure Handling in Ethernet Networks

2006

Ethernet is becoming increasingly popular in metro and carrier-grade networks because of its cost-effectiveness, simplicity and scalability. Nevertheless, Ethernet was originally designed as a LAN technology, therefore, it lacks some features, such as fast fault-protection and sophisticated management, which are very important in the new carrier-grade application areas. We propose a simple failure protection mechanism for Ethernet networks that can recover from node and link failures under 50 milliseconds, which is also provided by SDH/Sonet rings. The mechanism relies on a lightweight distributed protocol that runs on IP routers at the edges of the network and works with commodity off-the-shelf Ethernet switches. This paper describes the protocol design and implementation as well as the network testbed implementation for assessing the performance and the robustness of the mechanism. The results collected in the testbed are shown and discussed in the paper.

Carrier Grade Metro Ethernet Networks

2007

This paper gives an overview on actual trends and deployments of carrier-grade Ethernet in metro, access, and core networks. This includes the related motivation, concepts, and technologies as well as open issues regarding research, development, and standardization. Ethernet as a packet-based, connection-oriented technology is deployed for metro networks worldwide today. This is driven by the massive increase of (IP-based) data traffic and the related applications. The Ethernet deployments aim at most cost-efficient data service provisioning and the migration of all legacy Layer-2 services towards a unified platform. The goal is a massive reduction of both, CapEx and OpEx. Network operators and service providers impose increased requirements regarding scalability, quality of service including reliability and availability, and Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) features on their metro Ethernet solutions. These requirements are usually referred to as carrier-grade or tr...

Spanning tree elevation protocol: Enhancing metro Ethernet performance and QoS

Computer Communications, 2009

The economics and familiarity of Ethernet technology is motivating the vision of wide-scale adoption of Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN). Despite the progress made by the community on additional Ethernet standardization and commercialization of the first generation of MEN, the fundamental technology does not meet the expectations that carriers have traditionally held in terms of network resiliency, load management, and Quality of Service (QoS). We propose a new concept of Spanning Tree Elevation Protocol (STEP) that increases MEN performance while supporting QoS including traffic policing and service differentiation. STEP manages multiple Spanning Trees as a means to control the traffic flow rates and to differentiate classes of traffic. Whenever a service level agreement is compromised, STEP redirects frames of affected flows to the next spanning tree in sequence utilizing the alternate paths. As a result, the capacity in terms of network throughput is greatly enhanced while almost avoiding any reconvergence time in the case of failures. The gain ranges from 1.7% to 7.3% of the total traffic in the face of failure; while load balancing increases an additional 12.8% to 37% of the total throughput. At the same time, STEP maintains the required bandwidth for high priority traffic class during the failure scenarios and the high congestion scenarios.

Resilience technologies in Ethernet

Computer Networks, 2010

In choosing a network service technology, a subscriber considers many features such as latency, jitter, packet loss, security, and availability. The most important feature, and usually the one that determines the final selection, is the service availability. In this article, a full spectrum of applications are studied, ranging from the minimal constraints of home networks to the rigorous demands of Industrial Ethernet Networks. This is followed by a thorough examination of Ethernet layer resilience technologies. This paper provides the resilience characteristics that are key for each class of application Ó

iOPEN Testbed for Dynamic Resource Provisioning in Metro Ethernet Networks

2nd International Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks and Communities, 2006. TRIDENTCOM 2006., 2006

We propose a novel iOPEN (integrated OPtical EtherNet) architecture to support dynamic reconfiguration of lightpaths between Ethernet switches and study the network control and operation algorithms and their performance. The iOPEN network maintains the Ethernet frame forwarding features and takes advantage of current available optical network technologies, and extends the Ethernet network technology and services to the metro area. The frame forwarding mechanisms and network topology configurations adapt to changes in traffic conditions for guaranteed QoS and efficient resource utilization. The simulation results from simple network configuration indicate that the iOPEN architecture dynamically reconfigures logical topology of the Ethernet switches in response to traffic changes and utilizes resources more efficiently.

Bandwidth sensitive fast failure recovery scheme for Metro Ethernet

Computer Networks, 2008

Restoration in Ethernet has evolved over the years as specified in various standards: first the classical reconstruction of spanning trees was proposed in 802.1d; later 802.w specified RSTP to reduce the convergence time required in the STP protocol. Recently, the use of multiple spanning tree was suggested in 802.1s standard. In addition, there have been several proposals to implement multiple tree based restoration. Even though the results are promising they fall short of elevating Ethernet to a carrier grade technology. In this paper, we develop a distributed fast failure recovery spanning tree scheme, which restores lost facilities within tens of milliseconds. Recovery algorithm is localized around the point of failure on the spanning tree, thus avoiding disruption of the entire network. Failures are repaired using pre-configured sub spanning trees which are computed based on traffic requirements and resource availability. This paper also proposes possible enhancements to the failure recovery method using IEEE link aggregation standard to further reduce restoration time and provide differentiated survivability.

Ethernet over WDM: Optimization for resilience and scalability

2007 6th International Workshop on Design and Reliable Communication Networks, 2007

The emerging Ethernet technologies deployed in Metro networks provide services based on pure Ethernet. Low cost optical Ethernet interfaces are used to interconnect different sites. Then, the use of Wavelength Division Multiplexing technology with Optical Ethernet is clearly the next step in building cost efficient Metro networks. In this paper we propose a novel architecture and configuration methods that make Metro Ethernet better scale to larger traffic and to covering larger areas that consist of more nodes promising significantly lower costs.

Distributed Restoration Method for Metro Ethernet

International Conference on Networking International Conference on Systems and International Conference on Mobile Communications and Learning Technologies, 2006

Deploying Ethernet in the metro domain will require many different upgrades including end-to-end QoS guarantees, protection mechanisms and service performance monitoring. In this paper we propose a distributed method to address network failures for Ethernet which restores lost facilities within tens of milliseconds. Recovery algorithm is localized around the point of failure on the spanning tree thus avoiding the disruption of entire network.

Scalable, hierarchical, Ethernet transport network architecture (HETNA

Telecommunication Systems

Ethernet technology is not inherently scalable, and yet, Ethernet dominates LANs, and recently has diffused to access, aggregation networks, and MANs. Ethernet is even considered for transport networks in the backbone. Many solutions from IEEE, IETF, and MEF are considered for enabling Ethernet beyond LANs and bridged LANs. In this paper we offer HETNA, a hierarchical Ethernet forwarding, which is compatible with legacy networks used by enterprises, carriers, and backbone networks, and provides scalability, mobility, protection, multicasting, and QoS support to intra- and inter-domain networks in an efficient forwarding manner. The suggested architecture can handle streaming, real-time, multicasting, and other applications as well as various addressing mechanisms (e.g., IP or URI addressing). Both connection-oriented transport services and connectionless-oriented services are possible in the suggested architecture. This architecture was simulated and prototyped, showing significant improvements over regular Ethernet in terms of buffers and control messages that enable this network to function.