Extension of the Flow-Aware Networking (FAN) Architecture to the IP Over WDM Environment

Backbone networks are migrating to IP over WDM architectures. In such multi-layer network configurations, it is necessary to combine efficiently the resources of both layers in order to provide enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) to the end-users. In the context of existing IP networks, Flow-Aware Networking (FAN) has been proposed in order to provide QoS guarantees to multiplexed IP flows within an IP router. FAN is based on implicit admission control and per-flow scheduling. In this paper, the authors propose a new node architecture that extends the FAN concept to IP over WDM over-layed networks in which both optical and electronic resources are available.