Research On MPLS-TP-Supanet Network Interconnection

By observing the deficiency of the existing network system, Sichuan Network Communication Key Laboratory (SC-Netcom Lab) has proposed a connection-oriented Single physical layer User data transfer&switching Platform Architecture (SUPA) to ensure users’quality of service (QoS). This architecture adopts out-of-band signals and separates the user-data transfer platform from the signaling control and management platform, and then the user-data transfer platform is simplified to a single physical layer structure.A Transport Profile of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS-TP) is the consensus reached by the International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) after years of negotiation. Evolved from the MPLS technology and combined with the transmission operation mode, MPLS-TP will be widely used in access and service convergence as transmission demands have well been considered.To make SUPANET better accepted by users, we have to implement the interconnection between SUPANET and MPLS-TP, which is the main aim of this work.MPLS-TP over SUPANET network model has been employed to design two interconnection plans according to the different two network technologies, because SUPANET is the key research part of this work. In Plan A, the SUPANET domain serves as a gateway to connect two different MPLS-TP networks, which belong to different administrative domains.When the MPLS-TP frame reaches the Label switching Edge Router (LER), the double labels will be popped up, and it will turn back as a IP packet. Then the IP packet will be encapsulated into the EPF frame in SUPANET domain, Simultaneously IP packet fragmentation and recombination operations are involved. Differing from Plan A, In Plan B the SUPANET acts as a tunnel to connect two MPLS-TP networks in the same administrative domain. The "DoubelLabel-VLI" label mapping table at the interconnection gateway is established firstly. When the MPLS-TP frame arrives, the VLI value can be found according to the double labels carried by itself and then search the "DoubleLabel-VLI" label mapping table and other forwarding information also can be found according to the VLI value when search the forwarding switching table. After that the MPLS-TP frame is encapsulated into the EPF frame totally and transported in SUPANET according to the VLI value. These two plans both are designed with three parts in details involving connection establishment, data transmission and releasing resources. Also, serial signal operation has been replaced by paralleling signal operation to improve the end-to-end delay in plan B.Finally, the interconnection process related to the successful establishment for the corresponding tables and the correct message transmission are all verified for the proposed plans and their modified version through OPNET. The results demonstrate the correctness and feasibility of the two proposed interconnection plans.