A Traffic Engineering algorithm for Differentiated multicast Services over MPLS networks

A Traffic Engineering (TE) algorithm for multicast traffic distribution over Differentiated Services (Diff-Serv) aware with Multiprotocol Label Switching Traffic Engineering (MPLS-TE) networks is proposed. The algorithm can be used to forward multicast traffic offered by internet service providers (ISP) and solicited by clients based on their subscriptions to channels. In a quest for outperforming ISP's existent network capabilities, multicast traffic distribution technologies are added to offer higher quality services such as internet protocol (IP) multimedia multicast, without affecting the existent Service Level Agreement (SLA). The use of this type of enhanced networks is justified by the ability of deploying better forwarding performance, constrained based routing considering the network resources and Quality of Services (QoS) guarantees, faster and more predictable restoration capabilities needed in case of topology changes, etc. The solution relies on using MPLS constraint-based routing concepts (e.g. traffic trunks) in order to solve TE issues revealed during multicast traffic distribution. The behavior of the proposed algorithm has been analyzed through finite state machine (FSM) diagrams with the help of StateFlow module existent within Matlab environment. The proposed solution has been simulated using the OPNET environment, as well. Experimental results were collected and compared for IP multicast traffic passing through a network with resources on which the Diff-Sery QoS was enabled. Conclusions are drawn to prove the advantages offered by the QoS, in particularly Diff-Sery aware label switched paths (LSPs) of the MPLS-TE forwarding mechanism. A few cases have been simulated to prove the soundness of the proposed algorithm, and simulation results are given at the end.