Project Information Status: Finished  

 
       TIGER - Together IP, GMPLS and Ethernet Reconsidered  
   
Project Key Data Project Consortium
Project ID: CP3-013 Alcatel-Lucent, France
Start date: April 2006 France Telecom, France
End date: Q2/2008 GET-ENST, France
Total budget: 4.7MEuro IBBT, Belgium
Total effort: 43 PY Alcatel NV, Belgium
    FORTH-ICS, Greece
Coordinator: Nicolas Le Sauze, Alcatel-Lucent, France Virtual Trip ltd, Greece
    e-mail: nicolas.le_sauze (at) alcatel-lucent.fr Nokia Siemens Network, Germany
      RAD Data Communications, Israel
      Seabridge NetWorks (Siemens), Israel
      Univ de Catalunya (UPC), Spain
Focus
  • Design and evaluate integrated solutions for Metro Ethernet services.
  • Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) layer is the key Layer 2 technology together with pure IPv4/IPv6 packet forwarding as two fundamental data plane building blocks for access, metro and backbone networks
Main Results
  • Analysis of the market requirements.
  • Specification and evaluation of an integrated Ethernet-IP service solution, providing the required level of description for :
    -  Data plane development
    -  Protocol development
    -  Operational “user guide” for both Infrastructure management and service implementation
Abstract
Nowadays, there is a common industrial consensus in the fact that IP and Ethernet will remain the fundamental networking technologies for a significant long time. The trend towards IP/Ethernet access, backhaul, metro and core has become indeed irreversible. Nevertheless, related protocol families and architectures are still evolving autonomously. Therefore, cooperation between those families have to face evolution respectively in terms of technical feature and service driven applications. The TIGER project aims at analysing the current and future requirements and proposing extensions and innovative features answering the constraints defined previously.

Prior to new solution or optimization proposals, the existing solution (particularly those applicable to the Metro Ethernet market) should be analysed with respect to the competing solutions.. The analysis should contain a panorama of current solutions (Virtual Private LAN Service as developed by the IETF L2 VPN Working Group, 802.1ad Provider Bridges, 802.1ah Provider Backbone Bridges, etc.) with respective service support such as Transparent LAN Service (TLS), virtual private line services,…, technology features (data and control) as well as Standardization status. In addition, emerging solutions (such as Rbridges, Layer 2 Label Switched Paths, proprietary VLAN switching and control,…) will be identified in parallel to the elaboration of the new set of requirements and associated study case (operational modes) representative of the reconsidered central role of Ethernet.

Three main axis may serve a priori as guidelines for the new solution(s): enhancement of the adaptation capabilities between IP and Ethernet (e.g. definition of sub-network layer), extend usage of GMPLS control capabilities to Ethernet data plane (i.e. flow-oriented approach) and determine the behaviour of the IP layer on top of these new solution(s). Complete description of the new functions and related protocol architecture will be provided and illustrated as application reference study cases.

The solutions proposed will be demonstrated and evaluated through detailed benchmarking studies including criteria such as cost (at least through dimensioning evaluation), performances, scalability and more generally capabilities with respect to the requirements targeted initially. Finally, migration and required actions at appropriate standardization body will be undertaken to enable wide endorsement and interoperability of the proposed solution