Title: A scalable mechanism for establishing multi-point to multi-point traffic engineering paths in multiprotocol label switching networks

Authors: Mohamad Chaitou

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, Lebanese University, Faculty of Science, Nabatieh, Lebanon

Abstract: Network scalability is a major issue in core networks where multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) is largely deployed. In this paper, we propose a scalable solution for deploying bidirectional multicast trees in MPLS traffic engineering (TE) networks. The deployment of such trees is performed by defining the concept of multi-point to multi-point (MP2MP) TE label switched paths (LSP). Hence, one MP2MP TE LSP can be used instead of a full mesh of point to point (P2P) or point to multi-point (P2MP) TE-LSP in order to support value added applications such as video-conferencing. This leads to reduce the number of TE-LSPs in MPLS-TE networks and hence it improves their scalability. The paper presents the signalling procedures required to incorporate the new proposed MP2MP TE LSP in MPLS networks in addition to a simulation study in order to assess the scalability enhancement introduced by our contribution.

Keywords: bidirectional multicast trees; multi-point to multi-point; MP2MP paths; multiprotocol label switching; MPLS networks; traffic engineering; network scalability; signalling procedures; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNS.2016.077217

International Journal of Network Science, 2016 Vol.1 No.2, pp.167 - 185

Received: 15 Jun 2015
Accepted: 01 Nov 2015
Published online: 24 Jun 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article