IP MPLS

MPLS technology requires intense provisioning as dynamic label technology. MPLS as a service technology has been used to bring class of services and efficient forwarding in IP networks. The MPLS control plane has been used for over a decade to fulfill this automatic provisioning through the network. MPLS standard has moved inside the Transport Network. Traffic Engineering (TE) has been added for the efficient process of steering traffic across networks to optimize network performance and resources. The use of TE is to manage the network links through priority, monitor carefully bandwidth in real time, bundle the links and enable the setup of backup Label Switch Paths (LSPs) that use diverse links and network elements from the primary LSP. The TE extensions include Shared Risk Link Group (SRLG) information which not only guarantees diversity as links, but also links that do not share the same optical fiber protection tube. Marben offers strategic software components to support equipment vendors with an off-the-shelf MPLS control plane.

MARBEN IP MPLS

Marben offers strategic software components to support equipment vendors with an off-the-shelf MPLS control plane with a special focus on:

  • Layer 2 Virtual Private Network (L2 VPN) and Layer 3 Virtual Private Network (L3 VPN) service discovery based on LDP,
  • Pseudowire setup and maintenance using LDP as per RFC 5038,
  • MPLS-TE control plane based on RSVP-TE and OSPF-TE/ISIS-TE as per RFC 3209 and RFC 3630,
  • Path Computation Element based on PCE protocol as per RFC 4655 and RFC 5557 and algorithm for advanced path computation.
overview
IP MPLS Control plane

Marben portfolio focuses mainly on signaling, advertising and routing protocols with dedicated components:

  • MARBEN RSVP-TE provides a Signaling development kit to handle a reliable E2E provision of MPLS Traffic-Engineered Tunnels,
  • MARBEN OSPF-TE or MARDEN ISIS-TE provides Traffic Engineering development kit for multi-thread and re-entrant development API for advertising the traffic engineering TE link through the network and built a consistent and updated TE database,
  • A key component MARBEN MPLS controllers as part of a turnkey MPLS control plane solution effectively handles the interactions between the signaling, the path computation and the TE advertising protocols. This component brings a packet control plane off-the-shelf for a quick turnkey solution.
  • A complete pseudo wire control plane based on MARBEN LDP and PW development kits,
  • A PCE client-server role protocol MARBEN PCE-P provides a development kit and MARBEN Path computation algorithm for building a PCE client or server.

MPLS-TP extensions have been recently the main focus of Standard Developing Organizations (SDOs). The intent is to push even more MPLS principles into the core network with its simplicity and its low cost with the addition of some efficient Operations, Administration and Management (OAM) facilities for such revolutionary packet based protocol. These extensions that cope with the transport networks have driven SDOs to select GMPLS as the control plane technology when required. Marben is delivering thus both technologies that might be embedded into an MPLS / MPLS-TP gateway.