Experimental Investigation on Transmission Control Protocol Throughput Behavior in Optical Fiber Access Networks

ABSTRACT

This article describes an experimental investigation on the behavior of transmission control protocol in throughput measurements to be used in the verification of the service-level agreement between the Internet service provider and user in terms of line capacity for ultra-broadband access networks typical of fiber-to-the-x architectures. It is experimentally shown different conditions in high bandwidth-delay product links where the estimation of the line capacity based on a single transmission control protocol session results are unreliable. Simple equations reported in this work, and experimentally verified, point out the conditions in terms of packet loss, time delay, and line capacity, that allow consideration of the reliability of the measurement carried out with a single transmission control protocol session test by adopting a suitable measurement time duration.     

Role of a Measurement Plane to Monitor and Manage QOS in Optical Access Networks

In this work, we propose a measurement plane for Software Defined Networking (SDN) architectures for monitoring the network performance and supporting the orchestrator in managing the optical link resources. Concerning the measurement plane, we consider two models that we adopted in other contests: Misurainternet and mPlane. However, due to better scalability, the tests reported in this paper refer to mPlane that has been used in a SDN environment based on Fiber to the X (FTTX) accesses, with procedures of the central unit (orchestrator) that automatically manages GbE links in a regional network. The choices of the orchestrator are based on information received by a reasoner that analyzes the network performance elaborating data detected by active and passive probes. The mPlane-SDN architecture is tested in field measurements concerning FTTX accesses and in Lab to verify the resource allocations in case of traffic congestion. Furthermore, we also show the potentiality of our architecture to evolve toward a distributed controller approach with important advantages for telecom operator strategies.     

A Measurement Plane for Optical Networks to Manage Emergency Events

In this work, we show a wide geographical area optical network test bed, adopting the mPlane measurement plane for monitoring its performance and to manage software defined network approaches, with some specific tests and procedures dedicated to respond to disaster events and to support emergency networks. Such a test bed includes FTTX accesses, and it is currently implemented to support future 5G wireless services with slicing procedures based on Carrier Ethernet. The characteristics of this platform have been experimentally tested in the case of a damage-causing link failure and traffic congestion, showing a fast reactions to these disastrous events, allowing the user to recharge the initial QoS parameters.     

Experimental Verification on a Slicing Management Based on the mPlane Monitoring Plane with GPON Comparison

ABSTRACT

We experimentally verify a slicing approach, operating in a PBB-TE core and PON access architecture, based on the mPlane measurement plane, also adopted to manage slicing instances. The key element of this paper is the proposal and the implementation of the Slicing End Point (SEP), that is the client element to set up the slice path, and, at the same time, it allows us to monitor the network performance. The slices are based on VLAN/MPLS/PBB-TE logical paths and they can be managed for the implementation of different class of services. The whole SDN mPlane architecture allows us manage the slices also with restoration procedures. Furthermore, the tests on latency confirm the advantages of the NG-PON2 accesses for 5G backhauling also in this slicing configuration.