CAM03-1: On the Suitability of Applications for GMPLS Networks

After identifying that current GMPLS specifications only allow for the implementation of a call blocking mode of operation that handles immediate-request calls (not book-ahead calls), this paper addresses the question of suitability of different types of applications for such networks. Two types of applications are considered, ones in which the per-circuit bandwidth and mean call holding time are independent and ones in which they are dependent (file transfers). GMPLS networks are often cited for high-bandwidth applications and for large file transfers. This work, through analysis, reasons that GMPLS networks are not well suited both for applications in which the required per-circuit bandwidth is high, on the order of one-tenth the shared link capacity, or low, on the order of one-thousandth the shared link capacity. Ideal is the one-hundredth range. Further for file transfers, we show that the best range of operation to achieve high utilization and low call blocking rates with an acceptable number of ports on switches for traffic aggregation, requires call holding time to be small, in the range of seconds.