Flow-Aware Resilient Ring

A new proposal for Metropolitan Area Networks is presented and analyzed in the paper. The Flow-Aware Resilient Ring (FARR) combines the best features of two known network architectures: Flow-Aware Networking and Resilient Packet Ring. Transmitted traffic in FARR networks is based on implicitly classified flows which allows for providing Quality of Service guaranties in accordance with network neutrality rules. Moreover, the traffic with high priority is protected by the steering mechanism which ensures fast traffic redirection in time less than 50 ms. The advantages and weaknesses of the proposed architecture and new solutions to be used in it are described and analyzed in the paper. Moreover, it is shown that simultaneous implementation of all of them ensures fast, scalable and reliable transmission of streaming flows in FARR.