Protection Switching Methods for Point-to-Multipoint Connections in Packet Transport Networks

In this paper, we discuss the issues of providing protection for point-to-multipoint connections in both Ethernet and MPLS-TP-based packet transport networks. We introduce two types of per-leaf protection-linear and ring. Neither of the two types requires that modifications to existing standards be made. Their performances can be improved by a collective signal fail mechanism proposed in this paper. In addition, two schemes - tree protection and hybrid protection - are newly proposed to reduce the service recovery time when a single failure leads to multiple signal fail events, which in turn places a significant amount of processing burden upon a root node. The behavior of the tree protection protocol is designed with minimal modifications to existing standards. The hybrid protection scheme is devised to maximize the benefits of per-leaf protection and tree protection. To observe how well each scheme achieves an efficient traffic recovery, we evaluate their performances using a test bed as well as computer simulation based on the formulae found in this paper.