Design and performance evaluation of a GMPLS-enabled MPLS-TP/PWE3 node with integrated 10Gbps tunable DWDM transponders

To achieve cost reductions, simplified operations and flexible scalability in optical transport networks, a challenging approach is to replace the TDM aggregation and transport infrastructure, based on legacy SONET/SDH technology, by a new dynamic network infrastructure that delivers the high-bandwidth transport and deterministic performance of the optical circuit technology (i.e., WSON) along with the efficient aggregation and statistical multiplexing of a packet transport technology (e.g., MPLS-TP) to support IP and Ethernet services. This paper presents the architectural design, implementation and the performance evaluation of the forwarding capabilities of a MPLS-TP/PWE3 node with integrated 10Gbps tunable DWDM transponders to extend the GMPLS-enabled WSON transport network of the ADRENALINE testbed. The node has been implemented using commercial off-the-shelf hardware and open source software. An evaluation of the node is provided by means of analyzing the obtained throughput and CPU usage in two different evaluation scenarios with different traffic grooming strategies.