A Flexible Software Router based Framework to enable a DS-MPLS Transport Network

In the last years, the use of software routers as learning platforms and test devices for network building blocks evaluation has become popular in the academic community, due to PC hardware inexpensiveness and open source software flexibility. Despite the wide range of freely available network tools, the build up of a system that customizes and integrates such tools to provide enhanced or brand new capabilities is not a trivial task. This paper introduces a complete open source based framework to enable the interconnection of DS domains through a DS-MPLS transport network. It defines a set of architectural entities in a modular fashion that allows better maintenance, reuse and integration of capabilities. The proposed framework was implemented in a network composed by software routers and its functionalities have been verified.