Modelling and Cost Analysis of IP/MPLS Backbone Networks Based on Optical Transport Technology

摘要

IP will be the dominating network layer technology on which an ever increasing number of applications with growing bandwidth requirements will be based. Therefore the architecture of next generation IP backbone networks is a key issue for many network operators. New network solutions are required since traffic growth is leading to a strong increase in number and size of IP routers while already today's requirements make it difficult to realise large-scale IP backbone networks in a stable and cost-efficient way. In this paper, network architectures are proposed that rely on advanced optical transport technology. These solutions are compared to an IP over point-to-point WDM network which is the dominant solution in current IP backbone networks. The comparison takes both qualitative and quantitative issues into account. Results on resource requirements on different layers are shown for a realistic German network scenario. Based on these results a cost analysis is performed which takes the cost differences on various layers into account and finally proves that the new solutions can lead to significant cost reductions.