PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF GLOBAL OPEN ETHERNET (GOE) PROTOTYPE SYSTEM

摘要

This paper presents hardware and software implementation of a prototype system for Global Open Ethernet (GOE) as a cost-effective next generation Ethernet-based VPN solution. Various kinds of performance evaluation results for this prototype are also discussed. Three main approaches have been proposed to build a cost-effective VPN solution: (ⅰ) Resilient Packet Ring (RPR), (ⅱ) Ethernet over MPLS (EoMPLS); (ⅱ) VLAN-tag (802.1Q) stacking (Q-in-Q). These technologies have the following drawbacks. RPR approach provides fast protection/restoration of Ethernet frames only in a ring topology network, which is significant topology constraint. EoMPLS and Q-in-Q do not have any topology constraints, which makes them easy to deploy in the current networks. While EoMPLS provides such functionalities as fast network provisioning, failure recovery, VPN, and traffic engineering with MPLS tunneling, it requires expensive router platforms and incurs an overhead of MPLS VPN management. Q-in-Q allows user's VLAN-tagged frames to be transported with provider VLAN tag to solve the inherent scalability limitation of Ethernet networks cost-effectively, but it does not support private MAC addresses for user LANs and lacks MPLS features. It also incurs an overhead of VPN management. The proposed GOE system is designed to solve VPN management problems of both approaches with MPLS VPN functionality at a low cost of Ethernet-based solution. The basic components of GOE are: (ⅰ) a novel GOE tag ("routable", "extensible" and "scalable" tag) and a highspeed switching module utilizing the tag; (ⅱ) MAC address learning module over GOE-tagged network for VPLS service; (ⅲ) routing and protection module via a novel Per-Destination Multiple Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (PD-MRSTP); (ⅳ) a novel network In-Service Reconfiguration Protocol (ISR) via extended PD-MRSTP. We have developed a GOE prototype system consisting of a GOE core switch and a GOE edge switch in the network. We examined the software interoperability with legacy Ethernet switches. We also evaluated hardware performance of (ⅰ) and software performance of (ⅲ) and (ⅳ) of this system. The performance evaluation results prove that the proposed GOE system can be used as a cost-effective high-performance Ethernet-based VPN solution.