The rapidly increasing bandwidth requirements of IP traffic mean that networks based on optical technologies in conjunction with IP routing technologies will provide the backbone of the next generation Internet. One of the major issues is how to construct an optical-technology-based backbone network that offers the economical transport of large-scale IP/MPLS services while achieving reliable, robust network. The key to achieving this objective lies in multilayer coordination technologies using Multi-Layer Service Network [MLSN] Architecture, that we previously proposed [2]. One of the important aspects of MLSN architecture is ability to effectively use GMPLS network resources by IP/MPLS service networks. We propose extensions to previously proposed MLSN architecture. The proposed extensions to MLSN architecture are tailored to address "service virtualization and separation" of various service networks over GMPLS backbone. As a part of this extended MLSN architecture, we introduce novel concepts known as Logical Router (LR) and Virtual Router (VR) that would enable border router to be services domain router, so that it can connect multiple service networks such as L2VPN, L3VPN etc., over GMPLS backbone by offering service separation or virtualization. This service separation/isolation greatly enhances the reliability of next generation networks, as any failure on one service should be isolated from others. We evaluate our extended network architecture against requirements for the large scale network targeting at introducing such new technology to cope with vast traffic explosion and challenges in operation and service provision sophistication.

This letter proposes ALPEN, a simple, flexible and cost effective ATM-WAN architecture that emulates multiple ATM-layer protocols at the edge nodes. Any new ATM-layer protocol can be easily implemented by modifying only the edge nodes. The transit network is simple and independent of the protocols emulated, and ALPEN has a short response time. It is very suitable for implementing multimedia ATM networks.

We propose a fast and compact longest match table look-up method for very long network addresses like IP version 6. This method uses two ideas for a routing-table arranged in a tree-structure. The first idea is to make table look-up fast by caching pointers to intermediate nodes in the tree, reducing the number of node traversals. The second idea is to reduce the memory size required for each node in the tree by one-third by eliminating common parts of addresses of adjacent nodes. Evaluating the performance of this method by using actual routing table data of an IP backbone network, we found it was five to ten times faster than a conventional method.

Although the use of software-defined networking (SDN) enables routes of packets to be controlled with finer granularity (down to the individual flow level) by using traffic engineering (TE) and thereby enables better balancing of the link loads, the corresponding increase in the number of states that need to be managed at routers and controller is problematic in large-scale networks. Aggregating flows into macro flows and assigning routes by macro flow should be an effective approach to solving this problem. However, when macro flows are constructed as TE targets, variations of traffic rates in each macro flow should be minimized to improve route stability. We propose two methods for generating macro flows: one is based on a greedy algorithm that minimizes the variation in rates, and the other clusters micro flows with similar traffic variation patterns into groups and optimizes the traffic ratio of extracted from each cluster to aggregate into each macro flow. Evaluation using traffic demand matrixes for 48 hours of Internet2 traffic demonstrated that the proposed methods can reduce the number of TE targets to about 1/50 ∼ 1/400 without degrading the link-load balancing effect of TE.

This letter proposes a hierarchical label-switched path (LSP) setup scheme, called ConSet, for multi-layer generalized multi-protocol label switching (GMPLS) networks. ConSet allows a Path message to be transmitted to the downstream neighbor node without waiting for the establishment of the higher-order LSP. Confirmation of the establishment of the higher-order LSP is performed at the ingress node of the higher-order LSP before a Resv message of the lower-order LSP is transmitted to the upstream neighbor node. ConSet is able to set up hierarchical LSPs faster than the sequential scheme.

This paper proposes an algorithm for calculating routes that considers the include route constraint while minimizing cost. A route with include route constraint has to traverse a group of assigned nodes. The trouble when calculating a route that satisfies an include route constraint is that routes set in different sections may traverse the same link. In order to prevent this violation (overlap), we introduce an alternate route selection policy. Numerical results show that the probability of finding appropriate routes (no overlap) is more than 95% with the proposed algorithm while only 35% with the conventional algorithm.

We propose a mechanism called “optical plug and play” for constructing GMPLS networks automatically. It offers lower operation effort and fast network construction, and avoids misconfiguration. Optical plug and play architecture has its procedure, a link-up search mechanism for OXCs, network and node architectures to realize optical plug and play, and an LMP extension to exchange the information between nodes necessary for identifying adjacent nodes. We implement prototypes of both OXCs and routers that support the optical plug and play proposal. Simulations and experiments confirm its performance and feasibility.

In recent years, the time variation of Internet traffic has increased due to the growth of streaming and cloud services. Backbone networks must accommodate such traffic without congestion. Traffic engineering with traffic prediction is one approach to stably accommodating time-varying traffic. In this approach, routes are calculated from predicted traffic to avoid congestion, but predictions may include errors that cause congestion. We propose prediction-based traffic engineering that is robust against prediction errors. To achieve robust control, our method uses model predictive control, a process control method based on prediction of system dynamics. Routes are calculated so that future congestion is avoided without sudden route changes. We apply calculated routes for the next time slot, and observe traffic. Using the newly observed traffic, we again predict traffic and re-calculate the routes. Repeating these steps mitigates the impact of prediction errors, because traffic predictions are corrected in each time slot. Through simulations using backbone network traffic traces, we demonstrate that our method can avoid the congestion that the other methods cannot.

This proposes a scalable QoS control scheme, called Elephant Flow Control Scheme (EFCS) for high-speed large-capacity networks; it controls congestion and provides appropriate bandwidth to normal users' flows by controlling just the elephant flows. EFCS introduces a sampling packet threshold and drops packets considering flow size. EFCS also adopts a compensation parameter to control elephant flows to an appropriate level. Numerical results show that the sampling threshold increases control accuracy by 20% while reducing the amount of memory needed for packet sampling by 60% amount of memory by packet sampling; the elephant flows are controlled as intended by the compensation parameter. As a result, EFCS provides sufficient bandwidth to normal TCP flows in a scalable manner.

This paper proposes the Path Computation Element (PCE)-based backbone network architecture and verifies its feasibility through implementation and experiments. PCE communication Protocol (PCEP) is implemented for communication between the PCE and the management system to control and manage Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS)-based backbone networks.

We propose ATM switching nodes with a feedback rate control scheme, AREX, which does not require a large buffer space and does not deteriorate throughput even in large-scale and high-speed ATM-WANs. The goal of our study is to establish the ATM multi-protocol emulation network ALPEN, which is an ATM-WAN architecture for establishing a backbone for multimedia networks. ALPEN achieves an ATM-WAN which is robust against long propagation delays. It also provides high performance without a large buffer space in an ATM-WAN environment. In ALPEN, each transit node informs the edge nodes only its residual bandwidth ratio. The edge nodes support multiple ATM-layer services by emulating them based on the information notified by transit nodes. Our research has been directed towards achieving high performance ABR (Available Bit Rate) service in an ATM-WAN by using ALPEN. The conventional ABR service requires transit nodes to have relatively high calculation power and large buffer space to overcome the effect of the long propagation delays common in WANs. ALPEN node systems have been developed for trials with actual network traffic. ALPEN with AREX reduces the calculation load of transit nodes for ABR service. That is confirmed by the size of the DSP program created for a test system. ALPEN with AREX is, therefore, able to emulate ABR service with higher performance in ATM-WANs, because ALPEN edge nodes are able to indicate the users allowed by ER (Explicit Rate) feedback. The network throughput, maximum queue length at congestion point, and burst transmission rate are determined by simulation. ALPEN with AREX achieves better performances than the conventional ABR network.

IP Fast Reroute techniques have been proposed to achieve fast failure recovery, just a few milliseconds. The basic idea of IP Fast Reroute is to reduce recovery time by precomputing backup routes. The multiple routing configurations (MRC) algorithm was proposed to implement IP Fast Reroute. MRC prepares backup configurations, which are used for finding a detour route after a failure. However, this algorithm establishes too many backup configurations to recover from failures. We propose a new backup configuration computation algorithm that creates the fewest possible configurations. The basic idea is to construct a spanning tree that excludes failure links in each backup configuration. We show that the effectiveness of our algorithm is especially high in large-scale power-law networks.

Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) is being developed in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). In GMPLS-based wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, a wavelength in a fiber is used as a label. In the existing GMPLS signaling protocol for bidirectional paths in WDM networks with the wavelength continuity constraint, bidirectional path setup fails with high probability because the upstream label allocated by the previous hop node may not be accepted at the transit node. To solve this problem, this paper proposes an efficient bidirectional label switched path (LSP) setup scheme based on an upstream label set. Called the Upstream Label Set (ULS) scheme, it is an extension of the existing GMPLS signaling protocol. The ULS scheme is consistent with the existing GMPLS signaling procedure and so offers backward compatibility. The numerical results suggest that when the number of the LSP setup retries is limited, the ULS scheme offers lower blocking probability than the existing GMPLS signaling scheme which uses only with the upstream label (UL). In addition, under the condition that the constraint of the number of LSP setup retries is relaxed, the LSP setup time of the ULS scheme is faster than that of the existing scheme. Furthermore, by using our developed prototype of the GMPLS control system, in which the ULS scheme was installed, we demonstrated that the ULS scheme successfully setup bidirectional LSPs.

We survey traffic matrix models, whose elements represent the traffic demand between source-destination pair nodes. Modeling the traffic matrix is useful for multilayer Traffic Engineering (TE) in IP optical networks. Multilayer TE techniques make the network so designed flexible and reliable. This is because it allows reconfiguration of the virtual network topology (VNT), which consists of a set of several lower-layer (optical) paths and is provided to the higher layer, in response to fluctuations (diurnal) in traffic demand. It is, therefore, important to synthetically generate traffic matrices as close to the real ones as possible to maximize the performance of multilayer TE. We compare several models and clarify their applicability to VNT design and control. We find that it is difficult in practice to make an accurate traffic matrix with conventional schemes because of the high cost for data measurement and the complicated calculations involved. To overcome these problems, we newly introduce a simplified traffic matrix model that is practical; it well mirrors real networks. Next, this paper presents our developed server, the IP Optical TE server. It performs multilayer TE in IP optical networks. We evaluate the effectiveness of multilayer TE using our developed IP Optical server and the simplified traffic matrix. We confirm that multilayer TE offers significant CAPEX savings. Similarly, we demonstrate basic traffic control in IP optical networks, and confirm the dynamic control of the network and the feasibility of the IP Optical TE server.

A call admission control (CAC) scheme based on statistical information is proposed, called the statistical CAC scheme. A conventional scheme needs to manage session information for each link to update the residual bandwidth of a network in real time. This scheme has a scalability problem in terms of network size. The statistical CAC rejects session setup requests in accordance to a pre-computed ratio, called the rejection ratio. The rejection ratio is computed by using statistical information about the bandwidth requested for each link so that the congestion probability is less than an upper bound specified by a network operator. The statistical CAC is more scalable in terms of network size than the conventional scheme because it does not need to keep accommodated session state information. Numerical results show that the statistical CAC, even without exact session state information, only slightly degrades network utilization compared with the conventional scheme.

This paper evaluates three inter-domain redundancy path computation methods based on PCE (Path Computation Element). Some inter-domain paths carry traffic that must be assured of high quality and high reliability transfer such as telephony over IP and premium virtual private networks (VPNs). It is, therefore, important to set inter-domain redundancy paths, i.e. primary and secondary paths. The first scheme utilizes an existing protocol and the basic PCE implementation. It does not need any extension or modification. In the second scheme, PCEs make a virtual shortest path tree (VSPT) considering the candidates of primary paths that have corresponding secondary paths. The goal is to reduce blocking probability; corresponding secondary paths may be found more often after a primary path is decided; no protocol extension is necessary. In the third scheme, PCEs make a VSPT considering all candidates of primary and secondary paths. Blocking probability is further decreased since all possible candidates are located, and the sum of primary and secondary path cost is reduced by choosing the pair with minimum cost among all path pairs. Numerical evaluations show that the second and third schemes offer only a few percent reduction in blocking probability and path pair total cost, while the overheads imposed by protocol revision and increase of the amount of calculation and information to be exchanged are large. This suggests that the first scheme, the most basic and simple one, is the best choice.