Cost-effective VPC network design
Leonidas G. Georgiadis, G. Gikas, Magda Chatzaki, Stelios Sartzetakis · 2007
Complex environments for ATM based telecommunication services assume high availability and reliabilityof the network resources as well as the services. In order to reduce the cost of building and maintainingwide area ATM networks, efficient and cost-effective resource management techniques are needed to avoidover-allocation of resources. This requires building a network having the intelligence to monitor and controlits own quality of service requirements guaranteeing high availability without over-expending resources.Research in resource and routing management, that led to a number of optimizing algorithms, usuallytackles the problem of network availability and performance in isolation, not considering interactionsbetween control and management functions. It does not take explicitly into account the diversity ofperformance and bandwidth requirements of the many service classes supported by the network nor anintegrated approach to resource control, routing and alarm management from the point of view ofavailability and reliability.Recognizing the need for combining the functional capabilities of the control and management planes, theREFORM system (Resource Failure and restORation Management in ATM-based IBCN) has been designedand implemented in order to guarantee network performance and availability to network users under normaland fault conditions. This implies that the system under development will be characterized by a wide-rangeof functionality, ranging from generic functions like configuration and monitoring to specific functions likeself-healing, protection resource handling, routing and resource management functions. More specifically,control plane functions such as route selection, Operation Administration and Maintenance (OA&M) andself-healing mechanisms are integrated with higher level network-wide routing, VPC layer design andresource management functions.In this paper we will describe the approach adopted by the REFORM system for cost effective VPCnetwork design. In order to achieve cost-effectiveness of VPC network design, a functional component,namely the VPC Layer Design component, has been specified, designed, implemented and tested. Thiscomponent consists of a number of interacting algorithms, specifically, 1) the Connection Route Designalgorithm, 2) the Working VPC Route Design algorithm, 3) the Protection VPC Route Design algorithmand 4) the VPC Route Reconfiguration algorithm. In this paper we will present specification, design andimplementation issues for the first two algorithms. Furthermore an assessment of correctness andeffectiveness of the algorithms is presented based on experimental results. The design, implementation andexperimental results for the latter two algorithms will be presented in a forthcoming paper.