METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR INCREASING THE SCALABILITY OF THE ETHERNET OAM

摘要

After statically provisioned paths are created through an Ethernet network, trunks may be created to extend along those paths. The trunks extend between pairs of NNI interfaces on either end of the path, and Ethernet OAM may be run over the trunks to detect connectivity along the paths. Service instances and service groups may be provisioned over particular paths through the network. Each service instance/service group is associated with a trunk and the Ethernet OAM service on the trunk may be used to provide Ethernet connectivity OAM for the service instance/service group. Upon detection of a failure on the trunk, the service instances/service groups associated with the trunk may be caused to failover to an alternate path through the network. Thus, a single Ethernet OAM service instance may be used to provide connectivity verification so that connectivity detection does not need to be performed on each individual service instances/service group.

主权项

1. An Ethernet provider network, comprising a plurality of interconnected provider network elements configured to define a first path through the Ethernet provider network between a first provider network element operating as a first Provider Edge (PE) network element and a second provider network element operating as a second PE network element, each of the PE network elements having a plurality of User to Network Interfaces (UNIs) configured to connect to links associated with respective Customer Edge (CE) network elements and a plurality of Network to Network Interfaces (NNIs) configured to connect to links associated with other provider network elements, the first PE network element and the second PE network element being configured:
to define a first trunk to follow the first path through the Ethernet provider network, the trunk extending between a first NNI interface on the first PE network element and a second NNI interface on the second PE network element; to map, to the first trunk, service instances that extend between respective UNIs on the first PE network element and respective UNIs on the second PE network element; to run an Ethernet trunk OAM flow on the first trunk to determine connectivity on the first path; and to associate the Ethernet trunk OAM flow with the service instances that are mapped to the first trunk.