On the optimal configuration of metro Ethernet for triple play

Triple Play requires cost-effective implementation of three services that are different in both traffic and QoS requirements. The methods applied for optimization of Ethernet trees must support not only point-to-point pipes but also point-to-multipoint connections for multicast and statistical multiplexing models for better resource allocation. In this paper we present a QoS architecture for Triple Play service over metro Ethernet networks. Based on the architecture we propose an optimization framework and a novel scalable heuristic algorithm that supports optimal off-line configuration of trees and optimal VLAN assignment to these trees. The optimized configuration considers traffic engineering (TE) objectives and can be performed via centralized management plane. The obtained results show, that the performance of the proposed optimization framework can be further improved if the aggregation pipes are statistically multiplexed. Meanwhile, the proposed algorithm remains scalable, i.e. its complexity does not increase at all