Protocols for reliable high performance transport in packet based networks

Abstract

The need for high speed transport networks are in high demand as end user services evolves and their requirements for bandwidth increases. The availability of a service is also an important aspect meaning that the carrier network must support quick fault detection in order to be able to countermeasure service unavailability. The popularity of the ethernet protocol has given reason to investigate packet based transport protocols that may be a viable candidate for carrier networks. In this thesis the a study is done on the Optical Transport Network protocol and compared with the packet based Provider Backbone Bridging protocol with ITU-Ts Y.1731 Operation And Management for ethernet. The study is based on recommendations and protocols for both OTN and PBB-TE. The data transport and fault detection mechanism are studied in detail and presented. Their respective abilities for data transport and fault detection are compared to each other in order to assess whether differences and equalities can be used in a reliable high speed transport network with respect to transport of data and fault detection. The study of the two protocols shows that the Optical Transport Network protocol supports networks with a large fiber infrastructure and has better fault detection mechanism on the physical and logical link level. At service level PBB-TE is more flexible with regards to bandwidth utilization. Fault detection at service level in both protocols is sufficient in order to perform protection, but that PBB-TE still lacks extensive physical and logical link layer fault detection mechanisms.