GMPLS Fault Management and Its Impact on Service Resilience Differentiation

Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) is currently under standardization. It basically reuses the MPLS control plane (IP routing and signaling) for various technologies such as fiber switching, DWDM, SONET, and packet MPLS. Since GMPLS runs in core networks, fault management is of major concern. However, fast fault recovery and backup capacity assignments are very expensive and not all customers need this or are willing to pay for it. Therefore, we propose in this paper to use several protection and bandwidth-sharing schemes on the same network in order to provide differentiated services in the resilience space. This means an operator can offer and provide several customized services. The service management system implementing the schemes is built on top of a GMPLS network management system developed in our Lab.