A Scalable Hybrid Approach to Switching in Metro Ethernet Networks

The most common technology in local area networks is the Ethernet protocol. The continuing evolution of Ethernet has propelled it into the scope of metropolitan area networks. Even though Ethernet is fast and simple, the spanning tree in Ethernet is inefficient in terms of network utilization and load balancing. In this work, we compare the performance of spanning tree and link state algorithms in the context of layer 2 switching. In addition, we introduce a hybrid scheme that is customized for metro Ethernet networks. The results show that the hybrid scheme increases utilization and reduces the congestion ratio and delay. The performance gained as compared to RSTP, link state, and MSTP are 20.9%, 9.4%, and 11.4%, respectively. In addition, the hybrid scheme is more scalable than using pure link state.