Requirements and enhancements for the evolution of the GMPLS control plane of the ADRENALINE testbed to support multi-layer (MPLS-TP/WSON) capabilities

The demand for a higher transport capacity along with the appearance of new packet-based services (e.g., IPTV) is imposing strong requirements on current telecom networks. In the current transport network architecture, IP is the dominant convergence layer used to aggregate packet services. The growth on the bandwidth requirements leads to increase the number of IP routers and electronic interfaces which may cause scalability problems in terms of both network cost and consumed power. Thus, it becomes essential to seek for alternatives to attain a more cost-efficient, scalable, simple and flexible transport infrastructure. One of the most promising transport solutions relies on exploiting the Ethernet as the aggregation layer and the optical switching to offload the IP layer. In this context, we concentrate on such a hybrid architecture where a connection-oriented packet transport network (MPLS-TP) used to support Ethernet service delivery is integrated with a WSON infrastructure. This work identifies the ongoing steps to enhance the GMPLS control plane of the ADRENALINE testbed to effectively managing, in a unified way, such dual-layer network architecture. Particularly, these enhancements address the control of a MPLS-TP packet switching network element, the exploitation of the GMPLS concept of Forwarding Adjacency, the use of efficient multi-layer routing algorithms and the new functions among the controllers constituting the unified GMPLS control plane.