IWT TIGER - Together IP, GMPLS & Ethernet Reconsidered - IWT TIGER - Together IP, GMPLS & Ethernet Reconsidered

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IWT TIGER - Together IP, GMPLS & Ethernet Reconsidered

Results of the TIGER Project will be debated during the joint CELTIC TIGER Project workshop on "Benchmarking Carrier Ethernet technologies" - April 30, 2008 (Krakow, Poland) co-located with EuroNGI 2008 International Conference, Workshop website: http://www.kt.agh.edu.pl/ngi2008/workshop Presentation material is NOW available.

Evolution towards IP and Ethernet in metro-aggregation and metro-core networks is becoming irreversible. Nowadays, as Ethernet significantly penetrates into the metro network segment, there is a clear and common consensus in the telecom/datacom industry that IP and Ethernet will remain the two fundamental networking technologies for a significant period of time. Together with IPv4/IPv6 packet forwarding, Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) appears as the fundamental data plane building blocks of any future metro-aggregation and metro-core network. Nevertheless, related protocol families and architectures are still evolving autonomously. Therefore, cooperation between these technologies has to face evolution in terms of networking features but also in terms of service driven applications. The IWT TIGER project aims at proposing innovative and featured solution(s) answering these challenges.

The IWT TIGER project will address major research and technological aspects of the emerging Carrier Grade Ethernet technology, foundation of any future integrated metro environments. Investment of vendors and operators in this increasingly important domain will take benefit of the significant innovative concepts and mechanisms developed in the IWT TIGER project. This project will assess the role of an integrated solution as a judicious strategy, aligned with metro Ethernet market needs and technology evolution.

The IWT TIGER project (started in March 2006 and running until June 2008) focuses on the following objectives:

1. Analysis of the current and emerging data and control plane technologies in the metro-aggregation and metro-core Carrier Grade Ethernet market segments

2. Definition of the reference network architecture as well as corresponding data and control plane mechanisms leading to the design and specification of an integrated solution that includes:

Optimized collaboration of pure IP and Ethernet technologies and services including the modeling of the IP layer behavior on top of a dynamically evolving Ethernet infrastructure.

Unified intelligent control of the Ethernet layer using Generalized Multi-protocol Label Switching (GMPLS).

Design and specification of the data plane protocol architecture, associated traffic control mechanisms and theory of operation.

3. Specification of Carrier Grade Ethernet solution based on identified network (data and control plane) and services requirements, including:

Provisioning of point-to-point and multipoint network connectivity
Resource- and traffic-oriented traffic engineering
Operation, administration/maintenance, (performance) monitoring and supervision facilities
Resiliency of the provisioned connectivity and availability of the provisioned services
Scalability, robustness, resiliency, efficiency, flexibility, adaptivity (evolutivity), and cost of the required mechanisms
Support of services such as multimedia and multicast services, and Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks (L2VPN).

4. Detailed description of operational modes and planning including traffic engineering methodology, services implementation and migration strategies

5. Realization of functional, dimensioning and performance benchmarking studies of the TIGER solution aiming at significantly influencing implementation decisions and validating the added value of the TIGER solution

Functional analysis with respect to competitive approaches in terms of data plane, control plane, theory of operation
Performance benchmarking studies
Dimensioning studies (cost studies)

The IWT TIGER project aims at providing all means for development of a Carrier Grade Ethernet solution. It includes detailed specifications of data and control plane, theory of operations and optimization to ease the deployment of the solution and accelerate application deployment. The IWT TIGER project also aims at driving the decision of major players in the metro Ethernet market and operators in terms of strategic deployment choice.