Converged Network Services Using MPLS

The MPLS World Congress 2006 interoperability event has been organized and facilitated by the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) and the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) and endorsed by the MFA Forum.

 

The interoperability tests detailed in this document were conducted using MPLS routers and switches, emulators, as well as customer premises equipment from various vendors, during a hot-staging event in January 2006. Through several rounds of testing and refining the methodology, a final network of interoperable devices was successfully constructed. This network and the test results were demonstrated at MPLS World Congress 2006 in Paris, February 7-10, 2006.

 

Several new test scenarios were designed specifically for this showcase. In addition, previously used test plans were employed for regression testing since we intended to test converged network services:

• 99.999% carrier-grade high availability is one of the cornerstones of MPLS benefits. The Fast Reroute mechanism uses automatic pre-established backup paths to realize fast (sub-50 milliseconds) switchover in case of link or node failure. We had run Fast Reroute tests with a small number of vendors in 2004, and wanted to expand on these tests.

• Differentiated services have been available over MPLS in a simple IP quality-like fashion for a while. Now, new standards are on their way to enhance the integration of traffic engineering and application-specific differentiation. We intended verify the multi-vendor readiness of implementations.

• Multi-vendor layer 3 (IP) VPNs can be considered mature by now. Except for carrier-carrier inter-working protocols, multicast and IPv6 traffic forwarding, they are proven to be interoperable regarding functionality and scalability, as shown, for example, during the MPLS World Congress 2004 and 2005 interoperability events.

• The standards for Ethernet and ATM pseudowires have existed for a long time. Previous tests have shown that there are a lot of mature and stable implementations. We see a growing number of vendors implementing pseudowires and out of the 15 participants in the event most vendors were interested in verifying interoperability of their pseudowire implementations.

• Multipoint Ethernet services (Virtual Private LAN Service, VPLS) are offered by a growing number of carriers. The hierarchical part of the protocol (H-VPLS) enables service providers to scale the number of customers and endpoints per customer offered using VPLS, without stressing the backbone network.

 

Our regression test verified that previous years’ results were still valid. We tested scalability of hierarchical VPLS provider edge routers (PE-RS) and multi-tenant units (MTUs) in 2005. This time a total of six PE-RS and two MTU implementations were checked.

• A major topic of the test program was supposed to be multicast traffic forwarding in Ethernet and IP VPNs. There were quit a few hurdles in testing multicast in the context of MPLS – see test results section.

• With the proliferation of Ethernet access we intended to evaluate the relevant access solutions for IP/MPLS core networks, specifically carrier-class Ethernet access solutions and pseudowire access to support Layer 1 (TDM) and Layer 2 (ATM) services.

 

To ensure the event’s success, a one week hot-staging event with all the participating vendors was conducted before MPLS World Congress. The MPLS hot-staging took place at the EANTC (European Advanced Networking Test Center) in Berlin, Germany.

 

The interoperability Working Group of the MFA Forum, including EANTC and UNH-IOL, defined the MPLS test plans.

The following companies and devices demonstrated their interoperability in the test event: