Topology abstraction as VPN service

VPN as a managed service enables the service provider to offer more demanding and revenue generating services. Some of the common managed VPN services known today include auto discovery, security, and also a potential ability to perform on demand signaling. In this paper we try to tackle an important problem of service providers namely topology dissemination to VPN customers seeking dynamic bandwidth service. Topology dissemination can easily be translated into a VPN service. In this regard we define this service and its associated SLA. Further we elaborate on four basic QoS enabled topology abstraction services: fully meshed, source rooted star, star, and simple node. The paper also describes a generic framework to generate these abstractions and presents simulation results comparing performance of each of these schemes.