Transcript Mike O`Dell

Large Scale IP Networks
GMPLS and MPLS Examined
Vijay Gill
<[email protected]>
Agenda






Background
What is the problem
Solutions - (G)MPLS
Issues with the solutions above
An alternative proposal
Questions
Acronyms








PPS: Packets Per Second
ER/TE: Explicit Routing/Traffic Engineering
FEC: Forwarding Equivalence Class
CSPF: Constrained Shortest Path First
GMPLS: Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching
IGP: Interior Gateway Protocol (OSPF/IS-IS/RIP)
LDP: Label Distribution Protocol
SPF: Shortest Path First
Guide For Talk

Optimize On



Getting 95% of the problem with 15% effort
Flexibility
Operations And Engineering Guy



Expertise in building systems, networks, and
organizations that run IP networks
Seen the results of the meeting between
“Networks Powered by PowerPoint ™” and the
Real World ™
Hint: The Real World ™ wins every time
“I dislike rigidity. Rigidity means a dead hand and flexibility
means a living hand. One must understand this fully.”
- Miyamoto Musashi
Ordinal Vs. Cardinal Optimization*




More important to quickly narrow the search
for an optimal solution to a “good enough”
subset than to calculate the “perfect solution”
Ordinal (which is better) before Cardinal
(value of optimum)
Ballpark estimate
Historical Internet Vs the Telco approach
we don't need to boil the ocean - all we want is
a poached fish
*Based on work done by Yu-Chi Ho
Soften Requirements

Softening strict requirement of
optimality can make problems tractable
Cost = $1m
Cost = $1m/x
Getting the best decision for certain
Getting a decision within the top 5%
With probability = 0.99
In real life, we often settle for such a tradeoff with x=100 to 10,000
MPLS

M is for Multiprotocol (inside and out)



But despite being able to carry “anything” inside,
IP is the single most common payload
IP routers are the most common “outside”
Nameable aggregates of traffic have value




Explicit Routing
Comes with a price
Hype! QoS! Sings, dances, julienne fries!
One potato, to go.
What Is The Problem




Dense Network
Protect Paths
Routers out of PPS
Solved by


Constrained Meshed Routing
Mindset Changed
Problems Solved


MPLS solved ER/TE problems
RSVP-TE is extensible to ask for particular
qualities of service etc. rather than just
raw BW


Got perverted by the vendor marketing
folks
Try to do everything under the sun

QoS!
The Myth of QoS



FECs can be described which ask for particular queuing
disciplines inside switches and routers (via the RSVP-TE
mechanism) is very popular with some people
Fancy queuing and careful resource management can in
theory approach the lack of jitter that TDM provides
 Never overbook the jitter-free traffic
 Jitter-free traffic squeezes out the more elastic traffic
Belief is that the combination of the control plane and the
label-packet format can fully replace traditional TDM
 At the cost of some complexity and deploying "new
stuff"
QoS

Tough thing to define

Tougher to sell









Better make sure Best Effort Internet services work
All Gold, All the Time.
Differentiation must be palpable to the end user
Cost must not be prohibitive
Should not be hard to manage
Integrated with the best effort network
Also keep up with best effort deployment
QoS == Quantity of Service
What Are We Optimizing For?
These exhibits were originally published in Peter Ewens, Simon Landless, and Stagg
Newman, "Showing some backbone," The McKinsey Quarterly, 2001 Number 1, and can
be found on the publication's Web site, www.mckinseyquarterly.com. Used by permission.
Best Effort Is Good Enough



Statistical multiplexing saves money
Mixing various queuing disciplines into a statistically
multiplexed network is
 Complicated
 Costly
 Full of side effects
Overprovision for now
 Less "full" at peak traffic point: less efficient
 But, no queue means no need for queuing disciplines
 Small risk of jitter/delay for the sake of less complexity
vs. much more complexity
Cheaper Faster Better


Internet enabled applications will squeeze out
(eventually) applications that aren’t.
The number of mobile phone subscribers
worldwide is expected to reach 560 million by
year-end and to exceed the number of
households with televisions by 2003.
-Will Daugherty (McKinsey & Company)
GMPLS


The RSVP-TE label mechanism is
generalized in GMPLS to request resources
of any nature, notably lambdas, SDH
MUXes and "patch-panel" mappings
GMPLS is a CONTROL PLANE not a packet
system: there is no requirement that MPLS
"frames" be used in an GMPLS network
GMPLS




No centralized provisioning database
Available resources are consumed where the
CSPF reservation is allowed
IGP does topology discovery (OSPF) detects
faults and allows restart of reservations
OSPF LSP database is also consulted to find
the the CSPF, which will be requested (by
RSVP or LDP to all the elements along the
path) first.
Unified Control

The GMPLS argument is that one
control and packet system can be used
to knit together tremendously different
network components


IP Routers
Switching gear

Including ATM, SDH and WDM "switches"
GMPLS Flexibility Points
Control
Router
ATM
switch
SONET
ADM
Control
Control
~
~
DWDM
DWDM
XC
Control
~
~
Router
XC
SONET
ADM
ATM
switch
DWDM Signalling
MPlS Control Plane

UNI

RSVP-TE or LDP based

Routers request concatenation of resources through
the network
Benefits Of GMPLS



Meshy Restoral
Clients of all kinds (routers, TDM boxes)
Saves on router ports

Routers make expensive OEO


Mitigation: cost is amortized over lifetime of
box
Flattened topology
Benefits of GMPLS

Signaling between routers and optical
switches


Self provisioning
Faster Provisioning
Issues

Best Abstraction Of A Topology Is The
Topology


Spend money on packet-handling rather than
managing lots of meshed mid-sized boxes
“We have too many boxes now. We’re not
going to have a million more boxes in the
network. That scenario is utterly unthinkable”
-Mike O’Dell
Reexamining Optical Network
Assumptions

Replacing patch cords with OXCs doesn’t
affect the network much


OXCs et al. allow you to redeploy the topology
Real world topology doesn’t change very fast



Extend planning horizon
City-pair macroflows are long lived and tractable
Cost and complexity of running an IGP over the
optical boxes to gain speed of restoral over a
centralized system needs to be examined carefully
Thoughts

Our Control Theory-Fu is weak



Get provisioning from 18 months to a day
or two
We don't know anything we could do with
50ms provisioning without making a
disaster
Centralize view of topology and lay out
paths using expert systems vs. SPF in the
network
Self Provisioning Issues

Internet is an intentionally overdamped
system


The consequences of being underdamped
are catastrophic
Got the T-shirt


Frame Relay wars
Improving the frequency response of the
implementation implies lots more T-shirts
Optimize For The Biggest
Consumer

Design Goals Are To Replace



Back-to-back OEO in middle of nowhere
Unnecessary OEO for passthrough
Slow Humans
Typically
Packet
SONET
Photons
Routers
Cross
SONET
Connect Muxes
DWDM
DWDM
Multiple levels in Layer 1
SONET
SONET Cross
Muxes Connect
Packet
Routers
Typical Hut
ODF
ADM
Flexibility Points: Add or drop traffic to the network
How To

Use strong enough lasers



Avoid turning “pass-through” frequencies
into electrons
Attenuation hit (that’s what OEO is for)
Divert frequency bands onto dark or
transponders which do frequency
conversion
How To



Integrate the MUX within the control plane of
a large router
Tell router not to use a certain frequency
band for p2p traffic with its neighbor any
more because it has to be dropped out an
optical port.
That port is dark fiber terminating


A small WDM MUX (8 colors)
End piece of equipment @ 2.5GHz, 10GHz, etc.
Proposal
OEO+OADM
ADM


Optical ADM emits light as necessary by intercepting
one frequency & converting it electrically
The ADM becomes the source of the bits
How To


The router doesn't look at the signal
Doesn’t do



Regeneration
Look for SONET/SDH signaling
Passes through the frequency

Unfortunate attenuation hit, but that's
what OEO deals with).
How To




Any space not "reserved" is used in whatever way
seems optimal for big-router-to-big-router
connectivity, for moving packets.
Use some of the spectrum to build a “sub-ring” or
smaller p2p circuits for talking to smaller routers in
flexibility points along the way, if any
Or use separate fiber, if fiber-rich or for retaining a
historical system in parallel
Building a “virtual dark fiber” across this is possible,
but you need to do your own regen (OEO), crossconnection, etc.
This Solves For




Optimizing the transmission resources
for the largest consumer of optical
bitstream – IP
Saves money on 1310/1550 lasers
Power
SG&A
Save The Hype
“You cannot combat glossy magazines with
logic”
-Jeff Aitken
“Somehow “best effort” has become a
pejorative.”
-Mike O’Dell
Conclusions

Even the very wise cannot see all ends



Stupid is flexible
Modularity





Lets not paint ourselves into corners
Theory of Real Options
End2end arguments in system design
Trade upfront CAPEX for long term OPEX
Rise of the Stupid Network
Assumptions still undergoing work
References


GMPLS: http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-architecture-00.txt
MPLS: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3031.txt
Questions
Thanks to
Mike O’Dell, Sean Doran, and
Bill Barns