Alcatel Lucent

Neil Hart

Shafiq Pirbhai

Shawn P McAllister

Paul Kondrat

David Martin Harvey

Tiberiu Grigoriu

Andrew Dolganow

Florin S Balus

Mustapha Aissaoui

Tim Kuhl

Kajal Saha

Kendall Harvey

Senthil K Sathappan

Mark Alexander Leith Smallwood

David Weyand

A customer Quality-of-Service (QoS) transport capability is depicted and described herein. The customer QoS transport capability enables transparent transport of customer QoS information via a Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) network. The customer QoS transport capability enables customer QoS information that would normally be terminated at a point of ingress to a PBB network to be transported via the PBB network transparently and recovered at a point of egress from the PBB network.

Method and apparatus for providing transport of customer QoS information via PBB networks

Various embodiments relate to a communications system and related method for determining an address of a service access point (SAP) upon establishment of a service over a packet data network. A customer SAP connected to a provider SAP may request a link-local address for another customer SAP on the far-end of the packet data network. When the service, such as a virtual leased line (VLL) is not yet established, the provider SAP may generate an address for the customer based on another value, such as its own media access control (MAC) address. The generated address may then allow the service to become established, which may allow Neighbor Solicitation and Neighbor Advertisement packets to be sent, analyzed, and extracted. The provider SAP may then replace the generated address with the address extracted from the Neighbor Solicitation or Advertisement packet received after the service was established.

IPv6 generation to trigger a virtual leased line service

The invention is directed to providing NDP mediation over an IP interworking VLL. ICMPv6 Neighbor Discovery and Inverse Neighbor Discovery messages are intercepted by provider edge (PE) devices to learn both IPv6 interface addresses and link-layer addresses of customer edge (CE) devices before forwarding the messages to the CE devices, and in some cases after altering the messages to make them more meaningful to the receiving CE devices. In this manner, the CE device interface addresses do not need to be communicated over the LDP control link, as in IPv4 ARP Mediation.

Neighbour discovery protocol mediation

A method for testing connectivity of a multi-segment pseudo-wire ('MS-PW') in a network, the method comprising: sending an echo request message from a first provider edge ('PE') device to a second provider edge (&#x201c;PE&#x201d;) device for a section of the multi-segment pseudo-wire (&#x201c;MS-PW&#x201d;) between the first provider edge (&#x201c;PE&#x201d;) device and the second provider edge (&#x201c;PE&#x201d;) device; the echo request message being identified as such by a control word contained therein; an inner label of the echo request message having a time-to-live (&#x201c;TTL&#x201d;) value set to a number of segments in the section; the time-to-live (&#x201c;TTL&#x201d;) value for determining whether the control word is to be inspected as it traverses the section; upon the echo request message arriving at the second provider edge (&#x201c;PE&#x201d;) device, the second provider edge (&#x201c;PE&#x201d;) device recognizing the echo request message as such by inspecting the control word contained therein; and, receiving an echo reply message from the second provider edge (&#x201c;PE&#x201d;) device in response to the echo request message, the echo reply message confirming connectivity of the section.

Method and system for verifying connectivity of multi-segment pseudo-wires

Communication traffic isolation and control systems and methods are disclosed. Communication traffic streams are received and either passed or filtered by respective controllable filtering modules. The operation of the filtering modules is controlled on a per-module and thus a per-stream basis, responsive to congestion of filtered communication traffic streams at a communication traffic processing element to which the filtering modules are connected. Per-stream filtering provides traffic control for each communication traffic stream, and maintains isolation between the streams. Statistics associated with communication traffic filtered out of each stream may be collected, and possibly aggregated.

Communication traffic isolation and control

A method of circuit emulation over an IP interworking VLL, and related system, the method including one or more of the following: configuring a circuit emulation port with one or more logical interfaces; configuring one or more channels on each of the one or more logical interfaces; configuring the one or more channels with a destination IP address; configuring the one or more channels with a destination UDP port number; specifying an Ipipe VLL for each of the one or more channels; determining TDM traffic to go onto the specified Ipipe; packetizing TDM traffic; encapsulating the TDM traffic with encapsulation; inserting one or more packets of the TDM traffic into an IP interworking VLL; sending the one or more packets through the Ipipe; stripping the encapsulation from the one or more packets of the TDM traffic; and forwarding the one or more packets to a destination.

Circuit emulation over an IP interworking VLL

A system and method for providing APS (automatic protection switching) redundant pair control protocol signaling for multi-nodal APS (MN-APS) is provided. Periodic liveliness messages are exchanged between each node of a redundant pair. Each liveliness message contains an IHY (I heard you) message which indicates whether or not the sender of the liveliness message received within a duration of a hold time a previously transmitted liveliness message from the recipient. When more than one MN-APS group is configured between two redundant nodes, liveliness messages are bundled together to reduce processing loads.

System and method of multi-nodal APS control protocol signaling

Systems and methods of monitoring a communication traffic transfer rate control mechanism are provided. The traffic transfer rate control mechanism may control a rate of transfer of communication traffic from a first communication traffic management device to a second communication traffic management device, for example. A communication traffic storage history, which is indicative of an effect of the transfer rate control mechanism, is compiled by determining amounts of communication traffic stored in at least one communication traffic queue of at least one of the communication traffic management devices, at each of a number of monitor times. An indication of the determined amounts of communication traffic is provided, and may be analyzed to determine whether the transfer rate control mechanism actually achieves a desired effect. The transfer rate control mechanism or control parameters thereof may then be adjusted if the desired effect is not currently being achieved.

Communication traffic management monitoring systems and methods

Communication traffic management systems and methods are disclosed. A threshold status of a communication traffic queue of a second communication traffic management device which is capable of receiving communication traffic from a first communication traffic management device is determined, by comparing a depth of the queue to a corresponding threshold for instance. A rate of transfer of communication traffic to the second device, and possibly to particular queues of the second device from corresponding queues of the first device, is controlled based on the threshold status. Transmission of communication traffic from the queues of the second device may thus be in accordance with one communication traffic management scheme, whereas the content of each queue of the second device is controlled according to another communication traffic management scheme used by the first device to transfer communication traffic from its queues, to thereby provide for complex combined communication traffic management.

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Chelsea, Canada

Neil Hart