Pim Van Heuven

MPLS Recovery Mechanisms for IP-over-WDM Networks

Due to the fast increase of Internet traffic and the enormous bandwidth potential of all-optical transport networks based on wavelength division multiplexing, an IP-over-WDM network scenario is likely to be widespread in future communication networks. At the same time, IP networks are becoming more and more mission-critical. Hence, it is of paramount importance for IP-over-WDM networks to be able to recover quickly from frequently occurring network failures. This paper explains how multi-protocol label switching (both electrical and optical) recovery mechanisms can be important to reach that goal. Moreover, a novel MPLS recovery mechanism called fast topology-driven constrained-based rerouting is presented. Different MPLS recovery mechanisms are compared to each other. Special attention hereby goes to the additional capacity that is required to recover from frequently occurring failures.

Latency requirements of optical interconnects at different memory hierarchy levels of a computer system

It is the ideal of a computer designer to have a huge, yet very fast memory connected to a uniprocessor core. But in reality, these two requirements, fast and huge, are not reconcilable. For this reason, a memory hierarchy was introduced that consists of very fast and small memory close to the processor core (the registers) but slower and larger memory further away from the processor (Figure 1). When data is needed, it is fetched from the slower memory into faster memory, from which it can be quickly accessed.

High Router Flexibility and Performance by Combining Dedicated Lookup Hardware (IFT), off the Shelf Switches and Linux

In this paper we propose a new router architecture that combines both flexibility and performance. This router architecture aims at combining the best of two worlds: the commercial routers, which have a proven track for stability and performance but lack the flexibility of routers with open source operation system. The latter is particularly flexible because the source code is accessible for analysis and modification purposes as opposed to the traditional commercial routers, whose software can be altered by their manufacturers only.