A Service Layer for Providing Inter-CSP Transport Services

摘要

Until recently, Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Customer (B2C) frameworks and marketplaces used to reside on the basic Internet network as the means to communicate, or in other cases on a private network that connects the participating businesses. With the growth in network infrastructures and technology, Communication Service Providers (CSP) can offer advanced network services such as VPN connections between businesses, broadband connectivity for content distribution, and hosting services. These value added services will increase the CSP's revenue and will enable businesses to offer new and extended services to their customers. Some network services extend beyond the boundaries of a single CSP and require the collaboration of several CSPs to provide such inter-CSP services. These services are currently based on expensive connection-oriented technologies, e.g., Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) and Optical Transport Networks (OTN). CSPs' networks are isolated and inter-CSP service provisioning involves man-to-man negotiations and manual setup of network devices. Data-oriented technologies have recently been considered, e.g., Ethernet and MPLS variants, due to their efficiency, simplicity, and better fitness to data traffic.