Differentiated reliability in traffic engineered MPLS and DiffServ-aware next generation networks

Positioned between the IP service and optical transport planes, DiffServ-aware MPLS-TE (MPLS-DS-TE) combines the advantages of MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS), Differentiated Services (DiffServ) and Traffic Engineering (TE) to provide high performance and quality of service guarantees in next generation multimedia networks. However, there is no clear indication on how to ensure QoS control and provide differentiated reliability in case of failures. In previous work, we proposed the DiffServ* and the DiffProtect models to provide differentiated protection for IP services for which more reliability is needed. In this article, we review the key features of MPLS-DS-TE and explain how DiffServ* can be easily implemented using the new MPLS-DS-TE framework and discuss, with the support of simulation results, how DiffServ* improves MPLS-DS-TE's bandwidth management and QoS control capabilities in the event of failures.