F.K. Liotopoulos (Greece)
Metropolitan Ethernet networks, performance scalability,Mean Value Analysis (MVA), performance evaluation.
Ethernet is currently in evolution, from being used in smaller private networks towards a technology to be used in access and aggregation networks. In order for network operators to migrate their aggregation network to Ethernet, the currently existing flavours of Ethernet should be adapted to and proved to be carrier grade. However, as such aggregation networks typically connect huge amounts of customers and aggregate their traffic towards the core networks, scalability will be of utmost importance. This becomes even more the case when considering the continuous growth of customers, services and bandwidth per customer. In this paper, we propose a queuing model to study performance and scalability issues arising in a Metro Ethernet generalized reference topology. The proposed model is solved using an exact mean value analysis (MVA) method (for smaller problems) as well as an approximate MVA method (for larger problems). A tool, implementing the approximate MVA method has been developed and it is presented. It computes node utilizations, response times, throughputs and delays, identifies bottlenecks and simulates link and node faults. It is very fast, parametric and scalable to suit metropolitan-scale analysis needs. Its value lies in the fact that, with appropriate parameterization, the tool is able to produce detailed results and give useful insight for quite large – metro-scale – networks in very short time, which makes it very useful for sizing and preliminary high-level performance evaluations.
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