Improving Ethernet Reliability and Stability Using Global Open Ethernet Technology

Masaki UMAYABASHI
Youichi HIDAKA
Nobuyuki ENOMOTO
Daisaku OGASAHARA
Kazuo TAKAGI
Atsushi IWATA
Akira ARUTAKI

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E89-B    No.3    pp.675-682
Publication Date: 2006/03/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1093/ietcom/e89-b.3.675
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on the Next Generation Ethernet Technologies)
Category: 
Keyword: 
Ethernet,  virtual private network,  rapid spanning tree protocol,  VLAN tag,  failure recovery,  

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Summary: 
In this paper, authors present new schemes of our proposed Global Open Ethernet (GOE) technology from a viewpoint of improving reliability in metro-area Ethernet environment and show the numerical evidence on their performance results. Although several standardized or vendor proprietary technologies are proposed to improve Ethernet reliability, they still have reliability problems in terms of long failure recovery time (due to forwarding database (FDB) flush and recovery from a root bridge failure on spanning tree protocol), broadcast storm, and packet loss in network reconfiguration. To solve these problems, we introduce three schemes, a Per Destination - Multiple Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (PD-MRSTP), a GOE Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (GVSRP), and an In-Service Reconfiguration (ISR) schemes. PD-MRSTP scheme reduces the failure recovery time by eliminating the need to flush the FDB and to recover from root bridge failures. GVSRP scheme ensures the reliability of connections between a GOE domain and a legacy Ethernet domain. Combined with PD-MRSTP, GVSRP prevents broadcast storm problems due to loops in the inter-domain area. ISR scheme enables in-service bridge replacement and upgrade without packet loss. Evaluating our prototype system, we obtained the following remarkable performance results. The GOE network using PD-MRSTP scheme delivered a fast failure recovery performance (4 ms) independent of the number of MAC address entries, whereas the legacy Ethernet network took 522 ms when a bridge had 6000 MAC address entries. Since we found that the failure recovery time increased in proportion to the number of MAC address entries, the one in large carrier network having one million of MAC address entries would take several tens of seconds. Thus using PD-MRSTP can reduce failure recovery time one ten-thousandth comparing with that of legacy Ethernet. In addition, evaluation of the ISR scheme demonstrated that a network can be upgraded with zero packet loss. Therefore, a GOE-based VPN is a promising alternative to other Ethernet VPNs for its reliability and stability.