Interoperability of lightpath provisioning systems in a multi-domain testbed

Abstract

On-demand services are a key feature of Future Internet architectures. Already today research networks around the world provide dedicated optical circuits (lightpaths) to scientists, to offer a higher quality of network service. Tools to request and instantiate these lightpaths within a single domain exist, but interoperability of the various provisioning systems in a multi-domain scenario is still in its infancy. We present here our work for end-to-end multidomain circuits reservation and setup. We worked in a large-scale research testbed composed by different provisioning systems, spanning multiple network domains. We developed translation modules at the provisioning system boundaries that allow for seamless path reservation and setup. We conclude identifying the main elements for interoperability and provide some guidelines for future integration of research network provisioning systems. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2011.