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Abstract—Grid-GMPLS (G2MPLS) is conceived as a powerful
Network Control Plane solution that enhances the standard
ASON/GMPLS architecture providing single-step resource
reservation, co-allocation and maintenance of both network and
Grid resources. This paper identifies and discusses the main
issues and considerations that arise by Network Research and
Educational Networks and network operators in order to
facilitate the dissemination of G2MPLS Control Plane.
Interoperability issues and backwards compatibility with existing
Network Control Planes centre the scope of this study, which
intends to demonstrate the feasibility of adopting the proposed
architectures.

Index Terms—High Performance Grid Network Services,
Optical Networks, Network Control Plane, G2MPLS
I. INTRODUCTION
RID resource management is crucial in High Performance
Grid Networks. The advent of new applications that
make use of distributed Grid resources and huge amounts of
bandwidth necessitates an underlying transport network
capable of supporting the requirements posed by this type of
services [1]. Optical networks, which are able to cope with the
bandwidth requirements, need a Network Control Plane
(NCP) to control transport resources in a dynamic and
efficient way [2]. The deployment of a distributed Grid
enabled NCP entails thrilling challenges derived from the
enhanced procedures and functionalities that implement the
concept of Grid Network Services (GNS) [3].
In the IST Phosphorus project, the solution adopted
considers a Grid evolution of GMPLS protocols, namely
G2MPLS, which seamlessly serves Grid jobs by co-allocating
and provisioning network and Grid resources in a single-step.
The enrichment of G2MPLS is driven by procedures,
languages, and schemas, standardized by Open Grid Forum
(OGF) and OASIS and thus is not conceived to be an
application-specific architecture. Nevertheless, the

E. Escalona, G. Zervas, R. Nejabati, D. Simeonidou – University of Essex,
Colchester, UK, (e-mail: {eescal, gzerva, rnejab, dsimeo}@essex.ac.uk).
G. Markidis, A. Tzanakaki – Athens Information Technology (AIT),
Athens, Greece, (e-mail: {gmar, atza}@ait.edu.gr).
G. Carrozzo and N. Ciulli – neXtworks, Pisa, Italy, (e-mail: {g.carrozzo,
n.ciulli}@nextworks.it).
B. Belter, A. Binczewski – Poznan Supercomputing and Networking
Center, Poznan, Poland, (e-mail: {bartosz.belter, artur}@man.poznan.pl).
requirements of standard users that only require the automatic
setup and resiliency of their connections across the transport
network are still supported by the backward-compatibility of
G2MPLS with standard GMPLS [4]. G2MPLS is aimed at
providing part of the functionalities related to the selection,
co-allocation and maintenance of both Grid and network
resources in the same tier, guaranteeing service availability
and tailoring to the user requirements. The G2MPLS NCP can
bring to an innovation in this field, because of its faster
dynamics for service setup in the same time-scale of the NCP
ones, availability of well-established procedures for traffic
engineering, resiliency and crankback and uniform interface
(G.OUNI) for the Grid-user to trigger Grid & network
transactions not natively dependent on a specific Grid
middleware.
This paper presents a high level description of the proposed
G2MPLS network and service architectural (or Grid-network
layering) models developed in the Phosphorus framework.
Deriving from these models a set of network reference points
is identified and characterized in terms of available
functionalities along with enhanced G2MPLS procedures.
Moreover, the compliance of G2MPLS to the ASON/GMPLS
architectures foster for the possible integration of Grids in real
operational networks, by overcoming the current limitation of
Grids operating as stand-alone networks with their own
administrative ownership and procedures. With this purpose,
some possible network scenarios of GMPLS and G2MPLS co-
existence are introduced and an evaluation of the achievable
levels of interworking in signalling and routing procedures is
provided.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: in Section II a
description of the two main Phosphorus architectural models
(Overlay and Integrated) is provided and a set of network
reference points derived by these models is identified in
Section III. In Section IV the main considerations that arise
when deploying G2MPLS in current network infrastructures
are analyzed. In section V environments where the
coexistence of G2MPLS and GMPLS architectures are
necessary or required by the network operators are identified
and explored. Also possible network scenarios of such co-
existence are analyzed aiming at providing an evaluation of
the achievable level of interworking in routing and signalling
procedures. Finally section VI concludes the paper.
Deployment and Interoperability of the
Phosphorus Grid Enabled GMPLS (G2MPLS)
Control Plane
E. Escalona, G. Zervas, R. Nejabati, D. Simeonidou, G. Markidis, A. Tzanakaki
G. Carrozzo, N. Ciulli, B. Belter, A. Binczewski
G