Lightpath-Level Protection Versus Connection-Level Protection for Carrier-Grade Ethernet in a Mixed-Line-Rate Telecom Network

Ethernet is a success story in Local Area Networks (LAN). Efforts for extending its boundaries beyond LAN to the carriers' backbone networks are in progress. The paper studies the problem of designing reliable and cost-efficient high-rate (100 Gbit/s) carrier-grade Ethernet in a multi-line-rate telecom network under signal transmission-range constraints. Reliability is achieved using shared-path protection at two levels: Protection-at-Connection (PAC) level, or Protection-at-Lightpath (PAL) level.