End-to-end survivable broadband networks

Within the EC-sponsored RACE program, the IMMUNE project was established to analyze and specify appropriate strategies for introducing end-to-end survivability into corporate and public broadband networks to support these strategies by proper techniques and evaluation tools, and to demonstrate distributed restoration on PSN (public switched networks) and CPN (customer premises networks) laboratory models. The first objective was to define a set of survivability requirements and metrics to be used in the rest of the project. This has led to the identification of a range of survivability strategy options ann how they can be mapped onto user, service provider and operator requirements. The next step on the road to integral survivability is designing and planning survivable networks, and the evaluation of the restoration and protection mechanisms that will be applied in these networks. An overview is given of this part of the project. Most protection and restoration mechanisms operate within a single network layer and network part, autonomous from network management. The interaction of mechanisms in different network layers or in different network parts, and the role of network management, are discussed. For the demonstration lab models, two techniques have been selected for implementation: a distributed restoration mechanism for a meshed ATM PSN, and a CPN ATM ring protection switching mechanism. These techniques are described and an overview is given of the ongoing activities within the IMMUNE project, with a summary of the status of the demo models