Novel Techniques for Efficient Monitoring of Connectivity Services - A thesis work at Ericsson Research in Stockholm

Abstract

A network connectivity service provider commonly provides point-to-point Ethernet connectivity services over its managed-network domain to customers in a metropolitan area network. These services normally require a certain quality of service related to various connectivity parameters. As metro networks grow in size and complexity, network service providers are seeking for more automated and convenient ways of network connectivity services provisioning and monitoring of service level specifications. This thesis work has presented an architecture and implementation (called in-network module), at the network infrastructure layer, which helps to automate the monitoring of a provisioned point-to-point Ethernet service in a distributed manner. For each connectivity service, the monitoring is done by configuring and triggering active measurements of available bandwidth, and aggregating and communicating the measurement results to a central entity in the architecture. The active measurement is handled by an existing bandwidth measurement tool called BART (Bandwidth Available in Real-Time). Our in-network module fulfills requirements such as coordination for triggering available bandwidth measurements, aggregating the results in a distributed way, and communicating with the central management module.