Quality of provisioning as an OPEX-related issue in research networks

National Research and Education Networks (NERNs) are investigating the option to migrate their infrastructure from IP over static transport network to IP over control- plane based transport network, possibly deploying GMPLS or ASON technology. In the NREN-participated MUPBED project, quality of provisioning of bandwidth on-demand services has been studied. In this paper the main results are presented showing that without an automatic control-plane, connection provisioning is impaired by setup and release delays. In managed- networks, performance under dynamic traffic may be severely limited if an insufficient number of operators are active in the network operations center. The relation between number of operators and network performance is proved by theoretical models and simulations. The reduction of network-configuration workload achievable by an ASON/GMPLS control plane may be an important motivation for NRENs because of their specific operational expenditure model.