A novel interworking configuration to protect gateways in between survivable sub-networks

The paper first discusses the interworking between survivable sub-networks in transport networks. It then presents a novel generic interworking configuration to protect gateways between survivable sub-networks. A gateway comprises the network resources interconnecting neighbouring survivable sub-networks. The issue of gateway failures is relevant to both public as well as private networks where traffic may cross multiple sub-networks operated by different organisations. The proposed configuration is simple, achieves fast recovery of any single failure and requires only minimal coordination. The configuration has been simulated for a mesh-mesh and a ring-mesh structured survivable ATM layer network