We report the first successful experiment on Point-to-Multipoint (P2MP) VLAN path establishment on the overlay-model-based GMPLS-controlled wide area Ethernet. To support the overlay model, P2MP VLAN path signaling with egress output port indication is proposed and implemented. It is confirmed that our extended RSVP-TE software can correctly establish P2MP VLAN paths in the overlay-model network.

Connection setup on various computer networks is now achieved by GMPLS. This technology is based on the source-routing approach, which requires the source node to store metric information of the entire network prior to computing a route. Thus all metric information must be distributed to all network nodes and kept up-to-date. However, as metric information become more diverse and generalized, it is hard to update all information due to the huge update overhead. Emerging network services and applications require the network to support diverse metrics for achieving various communication qualities. Increasing the number of metrics supported by the network causes excessive processing of metric update messages. To reduce the number of metric update messages, another scheme is required. This paper proposes a connection setup scheme that uses flooding-based signaling rather than the distribution of metric information. The proposed scheme requires only flooding of signaling messages with requested metric information, no routing protocol is required. Evaluations confirm that the proposed scheme achieves connection establishment without excessive overhead. Our analysis shows that the proposed scheme greatly reduces the number of control messages compared to the conventional scheme, while their blocking probabilities are comparable.

A multi-domain GMPLS layer-2 switch capable network with VLAN tag swapping is demonstrated for the first time. In this demonstration, we verify three new features, establishing path with designating VLAN IDs, swapping VLAN ID on prototype switch, and management of VLAN IDs per domain. Using those three features, carrier-class Ethernet backbone networks which supports path route designation in multi-domain network can be established.

Recently, integration of multiple network domains, such as optical fiber domains and packet domains, has been required by network providers and users. To achieve this interdomain integration, generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) is now receiving more attention. One of the main features of a GMPLS network is its multilayered complexity, which sometimes places a large burden on source GMPLS routers to determine optimal routes to destinations in other domains and causes label switching path (LSP)-setup delays. To reduce this source-router burden, we propose hierarchically distributed path computation equipment (HDPCE) that cooperates with each other to determine interdomain routes, reduce setup delay, and conduct flexible interdomain route creation taking individual GMPLS domain routing policies into consideration. Each domain routing policy can be set independently from that of other domains, and this routing information is not revealed to other peer domains because each HDPCE is allocated to every domain, including an interdomain, which has several underlying domains under it. Each underlying domain's HDPCE flexibly chooses three types of routing policies depending on the domain's requirement, and the interdomain HDPCE conducts interdomain route creation in accordance with underlying domain policies. OSPF routing protocol is now being applied to interdomain routing on GMPLS networks. Therefore, we compare the proposed HDPCE-based interdomain route creation with OSPF-based route creation in terms of performance and applicability, and we evaluate the effects of each underlying domain policy on interdomain route creation.

Contents delivery services are deployed over the Internet and its technology. Contents delivery services demand high quality. Consequently, a large network capacity is required. In order to efficiently deliver such contents and to meet high quality demands, network operators are required to explicitly indicate the branch node and/or the link so that packets are efficiently sent. Fast restoration at the time of trouble has become an important issue. MPLS technology has been utilized to realize Traffic Engineering and Fast Reroute to cope with this issue. However, only a point-to-point path is allowed in the current MPLS technology. To allow an efficient high-quality contents delivery, a point-to-multipoint path called as P2MP-LSP is under discussion. However, proposed methods lack of getting information about P2MP-LSP node due to the current MPLS signaling method to establish P2MP-LSP. This paper introduces a discovery technique of the P2MP-LSP node and an establishment technique of the P2MP-LSP using BGP. In addition, a basic function of this proposal is experimented, and its practicality is evaluated.

The concept of an optical path layer has become increasingly attractive with the growth of traffic in the backbone network. The recent advances in optical switching technology support the deployment of optical cross-connect (OXC) nodes and the construction of large-scale optical path networks. This paper proposes a highly-reliable and fast pre-assigned restoration scheme for optical path networks. To achieve the pre-assigned restoration scheme, this paper investigates the extension of the Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) protocol functionality considering the interoperability with GMPLS capable IP routers in the future. This paper also proposes a new network control architecture called the "partition model" through discussion of network architecture. We clarify that the M:N end-to-end restoration scheme achieves efficient resource usage and management of the network especially in the "partitioned model" network. With the finite design of the GMPLS protocol extension based on the M:N end-to-end restoration scheme, we successfully achieve an intelligent protocol that guarantees 100% recovery against single link failure and is capable of protection grade fast restoration of the optical path less than 50 msec. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of GMPLS-controlled protection grade fast optical path restoration.

The demand for intra- and interdomain routing for multilayered networks such as those using generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) is strong. One of the features that is peculiar to GMPLS networks is that because several different domains, such as those of IP, ATM, and optical fiber, are combined with each other hierarchically, various routing policies, which are sometimes independent from underlying domains and sometimes taking the underlying domains' policies into consideration, are required. For example GMPLS's lower layer LSPs like lambda LSP are expected to be established independently before the upper-layer LSPs, like IP and MPLS LSPs, are established in the underlying domains. Another requirement for the GMPLS interdomain routing is lightening the burden for selecting the interdomain route, because there are a lot of demands to interconnect many GMPLS domains. In order to satisfy these demands, we propose a path computation server (PCS) that is special for the intra/interdomain routing of GMPLS networks. As a counterpart of the proposed interdomain routing, it is now becoming popular to apply OSPF to the GMPLS interdomain routing. Therefore, we compared the proposed interdomain routing with OSPF, and show the applicability of the routing to GMPLS networks.

The cost-effective provision of IP services requires multi-layered traffic engineering to obtain dynamic cooperation between IP and photonic layers. The effective control and management of generalized multi-protocol label-switching (GMPLS) networks is an essential part of this. Huge photonic capacities and the number of IP and photonic networks make it likely that enormous amounts of GMPLS network-related data will have to be managed in the near future. At the same time, routing burdens on individual GMPLS routers are critical because of the strong need for per-path quality of service (QoS). To solve these problems, we propose a hierarchically distributed network-management system (NMS) in which we flexibly allocate a GMPLS subnetwork to each sub-NMS and at the same time conduct QoS routing. The distributed nature of our architecture reduces the burden on the NMS as a whole and also lets us remove the routing-burden from GMPLS routers with minimum effect on management processes.