IEEE Communications Magazine • June 2008128 0163-6804/08/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
INTRODUCTION
The advent of grid computing and optical net-
works requires the development of interoperable
procedures for requesting and establishing
dynamic network and non-network services
between clients, applications, and computational
resources (e.g., CPUs, storage, etc.) — all con-
nected by the transport network [1,2]. The devel-
opment of these procedures requires the
definition of a network control plane (NCP) able
to support connectivity services through the
transport network for grid end points, signaling
protocols used to invoke the grid and network
services, and auto-discovery procedures to aid
signaling. All these procedures are required to
facilitate on demand, as well as in-advance grid
and network services.
In the Information Technologies Society
(IST) Phosphorus project, the solution adopted
for the implementation of this grid-enabled
NCP considers a grid evolution of generalized
multi-protocol label switching (GMPLS) proto-
cols, namely, grid-GMPLS (G2MPLS). The
G2MPLS seamless procedures serve grid jobs
by co-allocating and provisioning network and
grid resources in a single step. The G2MPLS
architecture is expected to expose interfaces
specific for grids and is made of a set of exten-
sions to the standard automatically-switched
optical network (ASON)/GMPLS architecture.
ASON/GMPLS specifies an architecture appli-
cable to synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH)
transport networks and optical transport net-
works. As such, G2MPLS built on top of
ASON/GMPLS primarily focuses on the issues
of seamless automatic control of grid and net-
work services in optical networks. Therefore,
G2MPLS results in a more powerful NCP solu-
tion than the standard ASON/GMPLS, because
it complies with the requirements for enhanced
network and grid services required by network
power users/applications (i.e., the grids). The
enrichment of G2MPLS is driven by proce-
dures, languages, and schemas standardized by
the Open Grid Forum (OGF) and the Organi-
zation for the Advancement of Structured
Information Standards (OASIS) and thus, is
not conceived to be an application-specific
architecture. Nevertheless, the requirements of
standard users who only require the automatic
set up and resiliency of their connections across
the transport network still are supported by the
backward-compatibility of G2MPLS with stan-
dard GMPLS. G2MPLS aims to provide part of
the functionality related to the selection, co-
allocation, and maintenance of both grid and
network resources in the same tier, guarantee-
ing service availability and tailoring to user
requirements.
The G2MPLS NCP can bring innovation in
this field because of:
ABSTRACT
G2MPLS is a network control plane architec-
ture that implements the concept of grid net-
work services. In the framework of the IST
Phosphorus project, GNS allows the provisioning
of network and grid resources in a single step
through a set of seamlessly integrated proce-
dures. The implementation of GNS imposes a
number of requirements in the control planes of
the underlying network infrastructure. This arti-
cle describes services such as GNS set up and
restoration, GNS resource and service discovery,
and advance reservation services, which are the
main trigger factors of the G2MPLS control
plane architectures. The article provides an
overview of overlay architecture prior to turning
to the main focus of the article, which is the
integrated architecture through service proce-
dures and the grid-enabled network interfaces
provided by the Phosphorus project.
MULTIDOMAIN OPTICAL NETWORKS:
ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
Georgios Zervas, Eduard Escalona, Reza Nejabati, and Dimitra Simeonidou, University of Essex
Gino Carrozzo and Nicola Ciulli, Nextworks
Bartosz Belter, Artur Binczewski, and Maciej Stroinski Poznan, Supercomputing and Networking Center
Anna Tzanakaki, George Markidis, Athens Information Technology
Phosphorus Grid-Enabled GMPLS
Control Plane (G2MPLS): Architectures,
Services, and Interfaces
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