A cross-layer optical circuit provisioning framework for data intensive IP end hosts

Using circuit-switched optical networks for next generation e-science applications is gaining increasing interest. In such applications, circuits are provisioned for end hosts to accomplish data-intensive or QoS-stringent communication tasks. Existing provisioning methods provide point-to-point connectivity for end hosts, that is, an established circuit connects one end host to another, and during the lifetime of the circuit, only communication tasks between the connected end hosts can be served. This inhibits circuits from being used in more general cases, where each end host communicates with different remote parities simultaneously through a single network interface. We propose V-STONES - a data flow-based VLAN tagging and switching technique to increase the connectivity of end host network interfaces in circuit-switched networks. With V-STONES, not only can an IP end host communicate with different remote systems concurrently through bandwidth guaranteed connections, but also protocol entities at different stack layers can talk to their counterparts through dedicated bandwidth pipes. In this article, we review the existing circuit provisioning methods and then discuss V-STONES and the architecture of cross-layer circuit provisioning for end hosts. We also introduce a prototype implementation in an optical network testbed and present the experimental results.