In a hybrid PON xDSL access network, multiple customer premise equipment (CPE) nodes connect over individual digital subscriber lines (DSLs) to a drop-point device. The drop-point device, which is typically reverse powered from the customer, is co-located with an optical network unit (ONU) of the passive optical network (PON). We demonstrate that the drop-point experiences very high buffer occupancies when no flow control or standard Ethernet PAUSE frame flow control is employed. In order to reduce the buffer occupancies in the drop-point, we introduce two gated flow control protocols that extend the polling-based PON medium access control to the DSL segments between the CPEs and the ONUs. We analyze the timing of the gated flow control mechanisms to specify the latest possible time instant when CPEs can start the DSL upstream transmissions so that the ONU can forward the upstream transmissions at the full PON upstream transmission bit rate. Through extensive simulations for a wide range of bursty traffic models, we find that the gated flow control mechanisms, specifically, the ONU and CPE grant sizing policies, enable effective control of the maximum drop-point buffer occupancies.
The coaxial copper cable deployed by cable companies represents another existing copper technology that can be used in conjunction with PONs to create a hybrid access network. Such a hybrid access network combining an Ethernet PON with an Ethernet over Coax (EoC) network was proposed in @cite_10 . The proposed network uses EPON protocols on the EoC segment in isolation from the EPON segment without any coordination between the segments. A similar network was examined in @cite_17 in terms of the blocking probability and delay for a video-on-demand service. None of these studies discussed the design of the drop-point device or explored DBA algorithms for these types of networks.
@cite_10 @cite_17
1970222837 2148375077
We investigate the challenges in designing the network architecture for running EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Network) Protocol over Coax, or EPoC in short. EPoC is the transparent extension of EPON over a cable operator's Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) network, and uses a hybrid of optical and coaxial technologies to carry traffic to and from end-users and the Internet backbone. For managing and controlling such a hybrid network, a network operator will prefer to have a unified scheduling, management, and quality-of-service (QoS) environment that includes both the optical and coax portions of the network. This can be achieved by extending the EPON Medium Access Control (MAC) to run over the coax physical layer, to have a centralized end-to-end network control from the cable head-end to the end-users' premises. The use of the coax portion of the network is transparent to EPON protocol operation in the headend, as the same MAC runs over the entire network. In this article, we describe the architecture of EPoC, and outline how the EPON MAC Control, i.e., the EPON Multi-Point Control Protocol (MPCP) can be extended for designing an end-to-end Multi-Point MAC Control for EPoC. We explain the design of several MAC functions and their operation, including framing for coax, Ethernet frame fragmentation, generation of upstream and downstream Media Allocation Plans, and automatic discovery and registration of user equipment. With strong backing from both service operators and equipment vendors, EPoC is set to become a rapidly-evolving standard within the next few years, and the creation of the IEEE 802.3bn Task Force for EPoC is a major step in that direction. To improve the limitations of Ethernet over Coax (EoC). technology in the bidirectional reformation of the hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network, this paper proposes the concept of Ethernet passive electronic network (EPEN) based on multi-point control protocol (MPCP) and the hybrid access scheme of Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) and EPEN. This paper describes the network architecture of EPEN, and introduces the implementation scheme and design of the EPEN system. At present, the project group has been working on the core technology research and key software and hardware design of the EPEN system, on which we have accomplished the hardware design and debugging, the embedded software coding and debugging, the EPEN network management protocol design and software coding. However, there is still a lot to do to achieve networking capability, management, security, quality of service (QoS) and some other functions. We propose a dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) scheme for EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Network) Protocol over Coax, or EPoC in short. EPoC is the transparent extension of EPON over a cable operator's Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) network, and is set to become a rapidly-evolving standard within the next few years, with strong backing from the industry, and with the creation of the IEEE 802.3bn Task Force. For managing and controlling EPoC, a network operator prefers to have a unified scheduling and quality-of-service (QoS) environment that includes both the optical and coax portions of the network. This is achieved by extending the EPON Medium Access Control (MAC) to run over the coax physical layer, to have a centralized end-to-end network control from the cable headend to the end-users' premises. In this paper, we describe a centralized DBA scheme for EPoC, where all allocation decisions are made at the operator's headend. The DBA is aware of the hybrid nature of the network, and considers round-trip times between optical and coax network units for intelligent and efficient allocations. We also formulate the allocation problem as a generalized optimization problem, which can be extended according to specific deployment scenarios. We present some initial simulation results to demonstrate the performance of the DBA. We present different mechanisms for downstream transmissions in the coax segment of Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) Protocol over Coax (EPoC). EPoC is the transparent extension of EPON over a cable operator's Hybrid Fiber-Coax network. For managing and controlling such a hybrid network, a network operator prefers to have a unified scheduling, management, and quality of service environment that includes both the optical and coax portions of the network. In EPoC, this is achieved by extending the EPON Medium Access Control to run over the coax physical layer, to have a centralized end-to-end network control from the cable head-end to the end users premises. In this paper, we focus on the downstream transmissions in EPoC. We study three different framing approaches for downstream coax frames based on how sub-carriers in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed symbol are modulated. We discuss the merits and demerits of each approach and then compare them based on their control overheads and the maximum average data transmission rates each of them can achieve. We analyze how different parameters such as modulation profile, symbol duration, number of sub-carriers and length of resource blocks affect the data rates and the performance of downstream transmissions. We present simulation results to examine the implications of these factors on packet-level performance, such as delay. The results indicate that dynamic and hybrid framing approaches tend to perform better than static approaches, when traffic and usage pattern are identical to those in real-world scenarios. Finally, we outline the important engineering and research problems in this area which can be topics of future research. VoD is a very attractive service which used for entertainment, education and other purposes. In this paper, we present an evolution method that integrates the PON and EoC to provide high dedicated bandwidth for the metropolitan VoD services. Using DVB, IPTV protocol, unicasting and broadcasting method to maximize the system throughput and by numerical analysis, the hybrid PON system can implement the metropolitan VoD services. The integration of Ethernet passive optical networks (EPONs) with wireless worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) is an approved solution for an access network. A resilient packet ring (RPR) is a good candidate for a metro network. Hence RPR, EPON, and WiMAX integration is a viable solution for metro-access network bridging. The present paper examines such integration, including an architecture and a joint media access control (MAC) protocol, as a solution for both access and metro networks. The proposed architecture is reliable due to the dependability of the RPR standard and the protection mechanism employed in the EPON. Moreover, the architecture contains a high fault tolerance against node and connection failure. The suggested MAC protocol includes a multi-level dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithm, a distributed admission control, a scheduler, and a routing algorithm. This MAC protocol aims at maximizing the advantages of the proposed architecture by distributing its functionalities over different parts of the architecture and jointly executing the parts of the MAC protocol. Feature Issue on Optical Access Networks (OAN) We describe two schemes developed to carry very-high-data-rate DSL (VDSL) signals over a fiber to the cabinet architecture for the upgrade of legacy copper networks. The first technique exploits the subcarrier bandwidth of uncooled semiconductor lasers for the transmission of multiple VDSL signals by using inexpensive interfacing hardware in the optical network unit (ONU). With a hybrid fiber-copper link comprising 100 m of twisted-pair copper cable and as much as 45 km of single-mode fiber, data transmission comparable with that for fiber to the home is achieved. In an extension to this design we demonstrate a system using a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier in a carrierless remote ONU configuration. Such a design might provide wavelength agility in the fiber access network for signal routing or active bandwidth allocation. The new IEEE 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) standard will improve significantly the energy efficiency of 10 Gbps copper transceivers by the introduction of a sleep mode for idle transmission times. The next step towards energy saving seems to be the application of similar concepts to Optical Ethernet, both for short and long range links. To this aim, this paper starts by proposing an analytical model to estimate the energy consumption of a link that uses a sleep-mode power saving mechanism. This model can be useful to answer a number of questions that need to be carefully studied. Otherwise, the complexity of optical components could be increased for the sake of an energy saving that could turn out negligible. In the rest of the paper we analyze three key questions to try to shed some light on this design decision: (a) is the new copper EEE actually outperforming the current regular optical Ethernet in terms of energy saving in such a way that optical PHYs (transceivers) actually need a green upgrade to remain more energy efficient than their copper counterparts? (b) How much energy saving could be actually achieved by EE optical Ethernet? (c) What is the transition time required to achieve a substantial energy saving at medium traffic loads on EE 10 Gb s optical Ethernet links? The answer to the latter question sets a concrete goal for short-term research in fast on-off laser technology. This paper investigates the challenges for developing the current local area network (LAN)-based Ethernet protocol into a technology for future network architectures that is capable of satisfying dynamic traffic demands with hard service guarantees using high-bit-rate channels (80...100 Gb s). The objective is to combine high-speed optical transmission and physical interfaces (PHY) with a medium access control (MAC) protocol, designed to meet the service guarantees in future metropolitan-area networks (MANs). Ethernet is an ideal candidate for the extension into the MAN as it allows seamless compatibility with the majority of existing LANs. The proposed extension of the MAC protocol focuses on backward compatibility as well as on the exploitation of the wavelength domain for routing of variable traffic demands. The high bit rates envisaged will easily exhaust the capacity of a single optical fiber in the C band and will require network algorithms optimizing the reuse of wavelength resources. To investigate this, four different static and dynamic optical architectures were studied that potentially offer advantages over current link-based designs. Both analytical and numerical modeling techniques were applied to quantify and compare the network performance for all architectures in terms of achievable throughput, delay, and the number of required wavelengths and to investigate the impact of nonuniform traffic demands. The results show that significant resource savings can be achieved by using end-to-end dynamic lightpath allocation, but at the expense of high delay. This article provides an up-to-date survey of hybrid fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks that leverage on the respective strengths of optical and wireless technologies and converge them seamlessly. FiWi networks become rapidly mature and give rise to new powerful access network solutions and paradigms. The survey first overviews the state of the art, enabling technologies and future developments of wireless and optical access networks, respectively, paying particular attention to wireless mesh networks and fiber to the home networks. After briefly reviewing some generic integration approaches of EPON and WiMAX networks, several recently proposed FiWi architectures based on different optical network topologies and WiFi technology are described. Finally, technological challenges toward the realization and commercial adoption of future FiWi access networks are identified. We investigate optical network unit (ONU) grant scheduling techniques for multichannel Ethernet passive optical networks (EPONs), such as wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) EPONs. We take a scheduling theoretic approach to solving the grant scheduling problem. We introduce a two-layer structure of the scheduling problem and investigate techniques to be used at both layers. We present an extensive ONU grant scheduling simulation study that provides: 1) insight into the nature of the ONU grant scheduling problem and 2) indication of which scheduling techniques are best for certain conditions. We find that the choice of scheduling framework has typically the largest impact on average queueing delay and achievable channel utilization. An offline scheduling framework is not work conserving and consequently wastes channel resources while waiting for all ONU REPORT messages before making access decisions. An online scheduling framework, although work conserving, does not provide the best performance since scheduling decisions are made with the information contained in a single ONU REPORT. We propose a novel online just-in-time (JIT) scheduling framework that is work conserving while increasing scheduling control by allowing the channel availability to drive the scheduling process. In online JIT, multiple ONU REPORTs can be considered together when making scheduling decisions, resulting in lower average queueing delay under certain conditions and a more effective service differentiation of ONUs. Mobile devices interact wirelessly with a growing proliferation of cloud-based applications. Due to significant traffic growth and a wide variety of multimedia solutions, enterprise IT departments are demanding more fine-grained visibility and control of mobile traffic. They want to deliver optimal performance and a high quality of experience to a variety of users and applications. In the wired world, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a technology being embraced to deliver performance guarantees to end users by dynamically orchestrating quality of service (QoS) policies on edge switches and routers. Guaranteeing performance in a wired access network does not require any network control on clients, because the last hop between the network edge and wired device is a dedicated point-to-point link (e.g. Ethernet). However, this is not the case with wireless LANs (WLAN), since the last hop is a shared half-duplex medium and the WiFi MAC protocol does not allow access points to coordinate client uplink transmissions or 802.11 QoS settings. Hence, we argue that the SDN paradigm needs to be extended to mobile clients to provide optimal network performance between the cloud and wirelessly-connected clients. In this paper, we propose a framework called meSDN and demonstrate that it enables WLAN virtualization, application-aware QoS and improves power-efficiency from our prototype on Android phones. Data centers play a key role in the expansion of cloud computing. However, the efficiency of data center networks is limited by oversubscription. The typical unbalanced traffic distributions of a DCN further aggravate the problem. Wireless networking, as a complementary technology to Ethernet, has the flexibility and capability to provide feasible approaches to handle the problem. In this article, we analyze the challenges of DCNs and articulate the motivations of employing wireless in DCNs. We also propose a hybrid Ethernet wireless DCN architecture and a mechanism to dynamically schedule wireless transmissions based on traffic demands. Our simulation study demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed wireless DCN. A large and rapidly growing proportion of users connect to the Internet via residential broadband networks such as Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) and cable. Residential networks are often the bottleneck in the last mile of today's Internet. Their characteristics critically affect Internet applications, including voice-over-IP, online games, and peer-to-peer content sharing delivery systems. However, to date, few studies have investigated commercial broadband deployments, and rigorous measurement data that characterize these networks at scale are lacking. In this paper, we present the first large-scale measurement study of major cable and DSL providers in North America and Europe. We describe and evaluate the measurement tools we developed for this purpose. Our study characterizes several properties of broadband networks, including link capacities, packet round-trip times and jitter, packet loss rates, queue lengths, and queue drop policies. Our analysis reveals important ways in which residential networks differ from how the Internet is conventionally thought to operate. We also discuss the implications of our findings for many emerging protocols and systems, including delay-based congestion control (e.g., PCP) and network coordinate systems (e.g., Vivaldi). The hybrid wireless-optical broadband-access network (WOBAN) is a promising architecture for future access networks. Recently, the wireless part of WOBAN has been gaining increasing attention, and early versions are being deployed as municipal access solutions to eliminate the wired drop to every wireless router at customer premises. This architecture saves on network deployment cost because the fiber need not penetrate each end-user, and it extends the reach of emerging optical-access solutions, such as passive optical networks. This paper first presents an architecture and a vision for the WOBAN and articulates why the combination of wireless and optical presents a compelling solution that optimizes the best of both worlds. While this discussion briefly touches upon the business drivers, the main arguments are based on technical and deployment considerations. Consequently, the rest of this paper reviews a variety of relevant research challenges, namely, network setup, network connectivity, and fault-tolerant behavior of the WOBAN. In the network setup, we review the design of a WOBAN where the back end is a wired optical network, the front end is managed by a wireless connectivity, and, in between, the tail ends of the optical part [known as optical network unit (ONU)] communicate directly with wireless base stations (known as ldquogateway routersrdquo). We outline algorithms to optimize the placement of ONUs in a WOBAN and report on a survey that we conducted on the distribution and types of wireless routers in the Wildhorse residential neighborhood of North Davis, CA. Then, we examine the WOBAN's routing properties (network connectivity), discuss the pros and cons of various routing algorithms, and summarize the idea behind fault-tolerant design of such hybrid networks. As wireless access technologies improve in data rates, the problem focus is shifting towards providing adequate backhaul from the wireless access points to the Internet. Existing wired backhaul technologies such as copper wires running at DSL, T1, or T3 speeds can be expensive to install or lease, and are becoming a performance bottleneck as wireless access speeds increase. Longhaul, non-line-of-sight wireless technologies such as WiMAX (802.16) hold the promise of enabling a high speed wireless backhaul as a cost-effective alternative. However, the biggest challenge in building a wireless backhaul is achieving guaranteed performance (throughput and delay) that is typically provided by a wired backhaul. This paper explores the problem of efficiently designing a multihop wireless backhaul to connect multiple wireless access points to a wired gateway. In particular, we provide a generalized link activation framework for scheduling packets over this wireless backhaul, such that any existing wireline scheduling policy can be implemented locally at each node of the wireless backhaul. We also present techniques for determining good interference-free routes within our scheduling framework, given the link rates and cross-link interference information. When a multihop wireline scheduler with worst case delay bounds (such as WFQ or Coordinated EDF) is implemented over the wireless backhaul, we show that our scheduling and routing framework guarantees approximately twice the delay of the corresponding wireline topology. Finally, we present simulation results to demonstrate the low delays achieved using our framework. A cluster of PCs can be seen as a collection of networked low cost disks; such a collection can be operated by proper software so as to provide the abstraction of a single, larger block device. By adding suitable data redundancy, such a disk collection as a whole could act as single, highly fault tolerant, distributed RAID device, providing capacity and reliability along with the convenient price performance typical of commodity clusters. We report about the design and performance of DRAID, a distributed RAID prototype running on a Gigabit Ethernet cluster of PCs. DRAID offers storage services under a single I O space (SIOS) block device abstraction. The SIOS feature implies that the storage space is accessible by each of the stations in the cluster, rather than throughout one or few end-points, with a potentially higher aggregate I O bandwidth and better suitability to parallel I O. Carrier Sense Multiple Access Collision Detection (CSMA CD) is the protocol for carrier transmission access in Ethernet networks (international standard IEEE 802.3). On Ethernet, any Network Interface Card (NIC) can try to send a packet in a channel at any time. If another NIC tries to send a packet at the same time, a collision is said to occur and the packets are discarded. The CSMA CD protocol was designed to avoid this problem, more precisely to allow a NIC to send its packet without collision. This is done by way of a randomized exponential backoff process. In this paper, we analyse the correctness of the CSMA CD protocol, using techniques from probabilistic model checking and approximate probabilistic model checking. The tools that we use are PRISM and APMC. Moreover, we provide a quantitative analysis of some CSMA CD properties. Industry standard Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS™) cable modems provide end users with an always-on, broadband connection to the Internet. Most applications delivered via that high-speed connection are transmitted via transmission control protocol (TCP). The interaction that takes place between TCP and the DOCSIS-defined media access control (MAC) protocol can have a negative impact on the performance of certain applications, and, as a result, negatively affect end users’ experience with those applications. This article discusses the inherent bi-directional behavior of TCP and its performance when used in conjunction with the DOCSIS MAC protocol. It provides typical examples of degradation in TCP throughput and describes how the addition of application awareness and acknowledgment filtering software can be used to improve TCP throughput. In this article, some considerations are presented about the way several well-known industrial networks (based on both fieldbus and industrial Ethernet solutions) can be practically extended with wireless subnetworks that rely on popular technologies, such as IEEE 802.11 and 802.15.4. This results in hybrid networks, which are able to combine the advantages of both wired and wireless solutions. In particular, advantages and drawbacks of several interconnection techniques are highlighted and, depending on the wired networks specifically taken into account, some hybrid configurations that are able to cope in a satisfactory way with the tight timing requirements often imposed by industrial control systems are suggested.