Enhancement of ethernet ring protection switching protocol for improving performance of carrier networks

Abstract

The ability to provide peer to peer connectivity, fast switching speed, simplicity and cost effectiveness make Ethernet desirable for LTE and future telecommunication carrier networks. With carrier grade switchover capability of Ethernet Ring Protection Switching (ERPS) Ethernet technology is posing as a viable solution in carrier networks. Network operators are replacing SONET/SDH (Synchronous Optical Network/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) by Ethernet to achieve a more bandwidth efficient and easier-to-maintain network. In this research, work has been done on two areas to improve Ethernet as a carrier transmission technology. Firstly, adaptive modulation (AM) is an evolution in technology which may effectively double the capacity of microwave links in favorable weather condition. Carrier network transmission technologies should be optimized to be able to efficiently respond to channel capacity changes to harness the capability of AM and to address the high bandwidth requirement of next generation networks. To achieve this, an improvement of the ERPS protocol to add channel bandwidth adaptability to Carrier Ethernet has been proposed. Secondly, a single Ethernet network, required for peer to peer connectivity in LTE, poses a severe scalability limitation on access transmission network. This thesis proposes Floodless Carrier-grade Scalable Ethernet Architecture (FCSEA) to meet protection switching and scalability requirements of Ethernet in carrier networks. The proposed scheme improves ERPS protocol to support adaptive modulation in ERPS protected microwave access network for improved throughput, reliability and energy efficiency. It uses a priority based cache retention principle, exploits protocol signaling procedure of cellular network standards and intercepts dynamic configuration (DHCP) messages to ensure an entirely floodless environment for end hosts in a single Ethernet network. We present a mathematical model to verify the effectiveness of our proposed modification. Comparison of simulation result with the developed mathematical model is provided. Simulation results and mathematical analysis show that the proposed enhancement achieves significantly higher throughput compared to existing ITU-T G.8032 protocol in varying channel conditions. Simulation results and analysis with real data is presented to verify effectiveness of FCSEA and to show its suitability over recent SDN based solutions for scalability.