Flexible traffic engineering in full mesh networks: Analysis of the gain in throughput and cost savings

Abstract

We study the link upgrading process in fixed and mobile broadband access networks, as a steadily ongoing planning procedure to keep pace with rapidly growing user demand and Internet traffic. Full mesh topologies are considered as a relevant core network structure, for which an explicit analysis of the resource and cost efficiency is carried out comparing bandwidth upgrades with and without optimized load balancing. The results indicate that flexible traffic path design can essentially increase the admissible throughput or vice versa reduce part of the overprovisioning of routing and transmission capacity with corresponding savings in costs of equipment as well as reduced energy consumption. The availability of traffic engineering prerequisites on different Internet (IP) and especially on Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networking platforms is addressed. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.