(GMPLS)
Rick
Gallaher is course
director for CCI,
President of Telecommunications Technical Services Inc., and author of Rick
Gallaher's MPLS Training Guide
March 4, 2002
This series of tutorials has
covered basic MPLS concepts: data
flow, signaling,
advanced
signaling, traffic
engineering and link
protection. In
this article, we are going to take a look at the future of
networking.
The dream of all carriers is to have one
automatic network control structure.
One method to accomplish this dream comes in the form
of a new set of protocols that comprise the framework of
Generalized Multi-protocol Label Switching (GMPLS).
Vocabulary:
- DWDM: Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing
- GMPLS: Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching
- LDP: Label Distribution Protocol
- LMP: Link Management Protocol
- LSP: Label Switched Path
- MIB: Management Information Base
- MPlS: Multi-Protocol Lambda Switching, IP over light
waves
- MPLS: Multi-Protocol Label Switching
- O-UNI: Optical User Network Interface
(O-UNI)
- RSVP: ReSource reserVation Protocol
- SDH: Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
- SDM: Space Division
Multiplexing
- SONET: Synchronous Optical
Network
- TDM: Time Division
Multiplexing
- TE: Traffic Engineering
- WDM: Wavelength Division
Multiplexing
- UNI: User
Network Interface (O-UNI)
Introduction:
Do you remember the TV ads several years ago for a famous
kitchen knife? It
was not an ordinary knife.
No, sir. This
knife could slice, dice, and julienne.
It could saw through a tin can and still cut a tomato
into paper-thin slices...
Like that famous knife, GMPLS is not ordinary MPLS.
GMPLS discovers its neighbors, distributes link
information, provides topology management, provides path
management, and link protection and recovery.
That is not all! GMPLS
packets fly through the network at nearly the speed of light.
By performing these functions, the pinnacle
of networking can be achieved.
GMPLS allows for centralized control, automatic
provisioning, load balancing,
provisioned bandwidth service, bandwidth-on-demand, and
Optical Virtual Private Network (OVPN).
Figure 1 GMPLS
Advantages
Let’s look at what led up to the creation of this super
MPLS protocol: GMPLS.
In the beginning, there was one network – the
telecom network. Then much later, datacom and the Internet
came along. The
telecommunications world was divided into two different and
distinct parts: the datacom world and the telecom world.
Datacom was primarily concerned with non-real time
performance, while the telecom/voicecom network was concerned
about real-time performance.
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