Unified GMPLS-Based Control of Carrier-Grade Ethernet Over DWDM

As the current networks run into bandwidth scalability limits, network carriers are looking for new technology options in order to provide more bandwidth as well as to improve their existing operational model with deterministic network behaviour without high increase of operational costs and investments. One of the solutions would be to migrate towards connection-oriented Ethernet technologies, enabling flexible packet aggregation and grooming, on top of the high-bandwidth offered by the reconfigurable wavelength-switched optical networks, providing end-to-end lightpaths, controlled by the unified GMPLS architecture. In this paper, the authors give an overview of the carrier-grade Ethernet technologies such as PBB-TE and the applications of MPLS-TP for Ethernet service delivery.