MPLS Architecture Research Articles

USING MPLS TECHNOLOGY TO SOLVE BGP “BLACKHOLE” PROBLEM

Traditional IP networks use a hop-by-pop principle for transmitting traffic. This leads to aggregation of heterogeneous traffic on links in different parts of the network, which causes considerable possible growth of congestion and leaves the network with both unbalanced use of resources and link failure in congested parts. To support a growing number of users and multiple classes of applications with different performance requirements and characteristics, service providers have been forced to adapt to new technologies. Researchers have found that conventional IP packet forwarding is not suitable for applications such as VOIP and video conferencing, which are currently in huge demand. In addition to offer a general provision of MPLS technology, architecture, operation method and features, we will consider the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) “Black hole” issue that results in the inability of the network to transfer traffic between some end points, and how MPLS help us avoid this problem and even optimize network operation and resources utilization.

Analysis and Evaluation of MPLS Network Performance

Currently, the increasing network connectivity is becoming more and more complex and the integration of several services continues to appear. These approaches need a guarantee in terms of throughput, the performance of which they potentially impact. So, the basic aim of this research is to get the best MPLS network performance towards linux and FreeBSD operating systems. This is why in this report, we have worked on MPLS network performance, which will help to identify performance metrics. To evaluate the performance, we used those operating systems implementing the MPLS architecture in order to define the best performing between the two on this domain. For this, we used scapy to measure the response times by varying the size of the packets sent and validate the measurements with the MATLAB Simulink. After all experiments, we realized that FreeBSD operating system is more reliable than linux in MPLS network base.

Sub-flow assignment model of multicast flows using multiple P2MP LSPs


 
 
 In previous works, a multi-objective traffic engineering scheme (MHDB-S model) using different distribution trees to multicast several flows were proposed. Because the flow assignment cannot be mapped directly into MPLS architecture, in this paper, we propose a liner system equation to create multiple point-2-multipoint LSPs based on the optimum sub-flow values obtained with our MHDB-S model.
 
 

Economic Viability of Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Economical and operational facets of networks drive the necessity for significant changes towards fundamentals of networking architectures. Recently, the momentum of programmable networking attempts illustrates the significance of economic aspects of network technologies. Software Defined Networking (SDN) has got the attention of researchers from both academia and industry as a means to decrease network costs and generate revenue for service providers due to features it promises in networking. In this article, we investigate how programmable network architectures, i.e. SDN technology, affect the network economics compared to traditional network architectures, i.e. MPLS technology. We define two metrics, Unit Service Cost Scalability and Cost-to-Service, to evaluate how SDN architecture performs compared to MPLS architecture. Also, we present mathematical models to calculate certain cost parts of a network. In addition, we compare different popular SDN control plane models, Centralized Control Plane (CCP), Distributed Control Plane (DCP), and Hierarchical Control Plane (HCP), to understand the economic impact of them with regards to the defined metrics. We use video traffic with different patterns for the comparison. This work aims at being a useful primer to providing insights regarding which technology and control plane model are appropriate for a specific service, i.e. video, for network owners to plan their investments.

Converged services over MPLS

As network traffic showed explosive growth in the 1990s, layer 2 services became a significant revenue source for providers. Unfortunately, since technology development did not progress in a timely and synchronized manner, many providers now need to manage multiple that are optimized for different services (voice, ATM, IP, etc.). In addition, these may share part of their resources in a layered manner, adding one network on top of the other one (e.g., IP over ATM), which results in overly complicated operation and inefficient use of network resources. Multiprotocol label switching provides a scalable solution for evolving providers' multiple service networks into a unified multiservice network. To make this transition happen, the one critical evolutionary process necessary is to carry the existing layer 1 TDM and layer 2 (ATM, frame relay, and Ethernet) traffic across MPLS core networks. This has been made possible by standardization work in the Internet Engineering Task Force (http://www.ictf.org), and has been successfully deployed by a number of providers around the world. In this article the pre-MPLS methods of network operation for multiple services are addressed, followed by an introduction to MPLS, and the layer 1 and layer 2 over MPLS architecture is provided in detail

Full label space reduction in MPLS networks: asymmetric merged tunneling

Traffic Engineering objective is to optimize network resource utilization. Although several works have been published about minimizing network resource utilization in MPLS networks, few of them have been focused in LSR label space reduction. This letter studies Asymmetric Merged Tunneling (AMT) as a new method for reducing the label space in MPLS network. The proposed method may be regarded as a combination of label merging (proposed in the MPLS architecture) and asymmetric tunneling (proposed recently in our previous works). Finally, simulation results are performed by comparing AMT with both ancestors. They show a great improvement in the label space reduction factor.

CRAM: Cell Re-labeling At Merge-points for ATM multicast

Many distributed multimedia applications involve data delivery from a source to multiple destinations, the participating nodes forming a multicast group. In the naive solution, separate connections can be established from each source to other group members. However, a tree can be established for each source with the participants as the leaf nodes or just have one tree spanning all the participants. In this paper, we introduce a data forwarding model to support such shared multicast trees over the ATM networks called CRAM (Cell Re-labeling At Merge-points for ATM multicast). Our work allows VC merging in the MPLS architecture and supports recently proposed wide area multicast protocols (like CBT and PIM) in ATM networks.