Resilient IP Backbone Network Solutions for a Realistic German Network Scenario

Abstract:
With the advent of new services the amount of IP traffic to be handled in operators’ core networks is expected to further increase at high growth rates over the next years. Therefore it is necessary to think about new network design concepts for IP backbone networks. A promising approach in this context is to leverage the cost-efficiency of transport equipment as compared to IP network gear by moving transit traffic from routers to an underlying transport network layer. In this paper, new aspects will be evaluated for several architectural options. Special emphasis is put on network resilience which is one of the key requirements in an IP backbone network. This involves the design of points of presence (PoP) as well as dimensioning of their interconnections. In this context it is also important to take into account how IP layer protocols react to different types of failures and what is the impact of the considered network architectures on that. The network architecture solutions are also compared quantitatively in terms of associated capital expenditures (CAPEX) required on different layers. This includes network modelling based on a realistic German network scenario.