Can critical real-time services of public infrastructures run over ethernet and MPLS networks?

Abstract

With the adoption of Ethernet-IP as the main technology for building end-to-end real-time networks, the requirement to deliver high availability, quality and secure services over Ethernet and MPLS has become strategic. Critical real-time traffic is generally penalized and the maximum restoration time of 50 msec. sometimes is exceeded because of devices hangings or the high delay to find an alternative path. Existing standard networks are not ready to transport real-time critical information. This issue must be solved specially in critical infrastructures such as railway control systems, because passengers' safety could be committed. In this work, first we have checked in which conditions the devices of the network will have a reply in real-time. Then, we will explain why existing Ethernet and MPLS combined solutions don't offer recovery time lower than 50 msec., and we will propose a new approach that achieves these conditions. Our statements are based on real measurements in real railway environments and using real testbeds. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.