Leveraging the Benefits of Provider Backbone Bridges

The Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB) standard, IEEE 802.1ah, has been studied in this paper to understand the limitations that come with this standard. The paper suggests that when compared with a Provider Bridges (PB) network, the deployment of a Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB) network offers simpler operations. This bridges standard is also cost effective because of lower capital expenditures and better scalability. This is particularly relevant because of the number of customers it can support. PBBs also have an advantage when used with Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS). This is because the backbone bridges reduce the overall MAC address learning requirements. Within this paper is also an overview of Provider Backbone Bridges to help readers understand the advantages it has over the usually used provider bridges. For the same, the paper discusses common PBB deployment situations, and examines the benefits of PBB when it is deployed with a core MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) network supporting VPLS.