Control Plane for Carrier-Grade Ethernet Network

We present a control plane architecture for a service-oriented carrier-grade ethernet transport network. Our control plane is based on a centralized management system and separate control elements. Network topology information is gathered from the control elements with ethernet-extended IS-IS protocol. Based on the topology, the management system is able to provision transport tunnels in the domain in an optimal way, utilizing a dedicated path computation element. RSVP-TEEth protocol, an extension of RSVP-TE, is used to signal the tunnels in the network. The control plane is developed as a part of a more complete system, which includes forwarding plane realized with network processors and a management plane for provisioning both intra-domain services, and inter-domain services between multiple domains.