A trial experience on management of MPLS-based multiservice networks

This article presents a component-based, distributed management system for Multiprotocol Label Switched (MPLS) multiservice networks'. Delivery of "triple play" multimedia services to the broadband residential user is a demanding challenge. The complexity is increased by the requirement of preserving Quality of Service (QoS) assurance for legacy connectivity services to the enterprise segment over the same infrastructure. New technologies are being introduced in the access, aggregation and core networks. Management applications must be aware of these advances and shall evolve accordingly. The proposed management architecture benefits from the capabilities of the MPLS Control Plane, in conjunction with a traditional management approach to provision QoS-aware services. This hybrid solution pursues short connectivity setup times by means of Control Plane signalling, with Traffic Engineering capabilities provided by the management framework. The system is being prototyped on a trial metropolitan testbed. Simulation results show that an advantageous trade-off between speed and resource optimisation is feasible.