Resilient Multipoint Networks based on Redundant Trees

Connection-oriented packet forwarding technologies such as MPLS, GMPLS and new entrant MPLS Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) are all evolving to meet the increasing demand for an efficient support of multicast applications like IPTV and multicast VPNs. One of the biggest challenges ahead is to develop bandwidth efficient and fault-resilient solutions for these services at a reasonable complexity cost. Starting from the state-of-the- art and standards insights, we highlight the technical limitations of current approaches and pinpoint major open issues. Based on this analysis, we propose a point-to-multipoint based solution that overcomes previous drawbacks and fulfills transport requirements for carrier-grade environments. We also present the support required for this scheme in the emerging standard-based control protocols and data plane architectures. ©2008 Alcatel-Lucent.