Performance Analysis of QoS-Aware Layer-2 VPNs over Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) Networks

The integration of Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (EPONs) and IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) has been lately presented as a promising fiber-wireless (FiWi) broadband access network. Conversely, lightweight layer-2 virtual private networks (VPNs) over FiWi, which can provide bandwidth guarantee to the respective users, were only recently addressed by Dhaini et. al. In this paper, WiMAX-VPON, the framework proposed by Dhaini et. al to support layer-2 VPNs over EPON-WiMAX, is improved to take into account the polling control overhead when distributing the VPN bandwidth. A new generic analytical model is also presented to evaluate the performance of each registered VPN service. Our proposed model, which can also be used to analyze any polling-based FiWi network, applies for wireless and optical domains and provides performance measurements such as packet queuing delay, end-to-end (from wireless user to optical server) packet delay and average queue size. Numerical results are compared with simulation experiments, and show consistency between both outcomes.