100GET-E3 R3G

funded this research project. Part of the CELTIC initiative.

Project Team

Heads	Prof. Dr.-Ing. Phuoc Tran-Gia, Dr. Michael Menth, Dr. Rastin Pries
Researchers	Michael Duelli
Students	Julian Ott, Vlad Singeorzan, Thilo Müller
Former Students	Christopher Pluntke, Eduard Weber, Xiao-Hua Qin, Anke Endler
Funded period	October 2007 - September 2010, October 2010 - December 2010

Summary

Data communication demands for more and more capacity. DSL access of 16 Mbit/s is common in Germany, 100 Mbit/s is already offered by some providers. Fiber access is state of the art in many countries of South-East Asia and tremendous traffic volumes are exchanged over fiber lines. This trend will continue over the next decade. The market is competitive such that Internet service providers (ISPs) need to provide high-quality services (high throughput, little delay, little jitter, high reliability) at low cost.

The CELTIC initiative brings together university researchers and business partners to jointly face this challenge. ADVA, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Nokia-Siemens Networks are the main drivers each of them heading a group of university and small or medium enterprise partners. The Chair of Distributed Systems of the University of Wuerzburg is part of the subproject "100GET-E3: End-to-End Carrier-Grade Ethernet" led by Nokia-Siemens Networks and receives funding under the name "R3G: Routing, Grooming, Resilience, and Resource Management for Multilayer Networks".

The objective of the project 100GET is to provide a low-cost high-capacity solution for the network of the future. Two main objectives are addressed: the transmission of 100 Gbit/s and the provision of high-quality services at low cost. The project R3G focuses on the second aspect.

One of the main cost factors for ISPs are network components and among them IP routers are most expensive. Therefore, ISPs look for alternatives that are cheaper with respect to investment and operation cost. Enhanced Ethernet technology - the so-called Carrier Ethernet - seems to be a candidate to replace many IP routers within networks of ISPs. Therefore, international standardization bodies like IEEE or IETF push forward T-MPLS, VLAN XC, and PBB-TE/PBT.

The research of the University of Wuerzburg targets at the following issues. Cost savings can be obtained by keeping traffic in the optical domain as long as possible, using packet-switching capabilities of Carrier Ethernet nodes inside the network only when needed, and banning IP routers from the core. This is achieved by intelligent traffic grooming and routing that should make best use of the network resources. In addition, the reliability of the network is improved by cost-efficient protection switching and restoration mechanisms. To that end, optimization methods for the design and configuration of a future communication architecture are developed.