Cooperation of control and management plane for provisioning in MPLS networks

This paper presents an alternative method to setup label switched paths (LSPs) with quality of service (QoS) constraints in multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) enabled networks. The motivation behind this work is to gather the advantages of the control plane based approach and the management plane based approach to establish LSPs. In other words we aim for a mechanism with setup times as shorter as those realizable by control plane signalling and with traffic engineering capabilities as powerful as in management systems. The concept has been prototyped and initial tests have been performed in a simulated network environment. The outcome of these tests show that our system can be nearly as fast as conventional control plane setup mechanisms and by construction it can take advantage of all the network information got by the management plane for constrained-based routing (CBR) purposes. Therefore, a trade-off between speed and resource optimisation is feasible. The implementation of the concept in real networks requires platforms with standard control and management interfaces, that have the role of peer network nodes and management agents at a time.