IN-BAND SIGNALING FOR NETWORK PROTECTION SWITCHING

摘要

Systems are disclosed for automated protection switching enabled by in-band signaling. A status monitor coupled to a switch fabric may be operable to read signal quality information from cells packet-switched over the fabric, the cells carrying traffic signals from one or more working channels between two network nodes. The status monitor may apply a protection algorithm to the signal quality information to determine whether a traffic signal on a working channel meets requirements indicative of channel failure or degradation sufficient to move the traffic signal to an additional protection channel between the two nodes. The status monitor may encode a request to transfer this traffic signal in cells switched by the fabric. In some examples, this request may be encoded in an optional user and fabric overhead field of cells consistent with the Optical-Transport Network (OTN) over Packet Fabric Protocol (OFP).

主权项

1. A system for in-band signaling for automated network protection, comprising:
a channel monitor at a first network node operable to augment a traffic signal received at the first network node with a signal quality indicator for a working channel carrying the traffic signal between the first network node and a second network node; a switch matrix at the first network node, the switch matrix operable to perform packet-switched routing of data cells carrying the traffic signal; and a status monitor communicatively coupled to the switch matrix, the status monitor operable to indicate placement of the traffic signal from the working channel onto a protection channel also between the first network node and the second network node, based on the signal quality indicator, as read by that status monitor from a data cell, satisfying requirements imposed by a state-machine-implemented algorithm provided by the status monitor.