RESILIENT PACKET RING NETWORKS

Chapter 1
Introduction
The nature of the public network has changed. Demand for Internet Protocol(IP)data
is growing at a compound annual rate of between 100% and 800%1,while voice demand
remains stable.Over the last 10 years, as data traffic has grown both in importance and
volume,technologies such as frame relay,ATM,and point-to-point protocol (PPP) have
been developed to force fit data onto the circuit network.while these protocols provided
virtual connection-a useful approach for many services-they have proven too
inefficient,costly and complex to scale to the levels necessary to satisfy the insatiable
demand for data services.More recently,Gigabit Ethernet has been adopted by many
network service providers as a way to network user data without the burden of
SONET.GigE has shortcomings when applied in carrier networks were recognized and
for these problems, a technology called Resilient Packet Ring Technology were
developed.
Resilient Packet Ring Technology were developed recognizing the shortcomings
in the existing network solutions which are Gigabit Ethernet, SONET.It works in point to
point ,linear,ring or mesh networks.RPR has a MAC layer technology ,being standardized
in the IEEE 802.17 workgroup. This employs special reuse to maximize bandwidth
utilization,provides a distributed fairness algorithm,and ensures high -speed traffic
protection similar to SONET Automatic Protection Switching(APS).
Data,rather than voice circuits,dominates today's bandwidth requirements.New
services such as IP VPN,voice over IP(VoIP),and digital video are no longer confined
within the corporate local-area network.these applications are placing new requirements
on metropolitan-area network eand wide-area network transport.
Table 1. Resilient Packet Ring Technology Key Features

Resilience proactive span protection automatically avoids failed spans within 50 ms.
Services support for latency/jitter sensitive traffic such as voice and video.support for
committed information rate (CIR) services.
Efficiency spatial reuse:Unlike SONET,bandwidth is consumed only between the source
and destination nodes.packets are removed at their destination ,leaving this
bandwidth available to downstream nodes on the ring.
Scalable supports topologies of more than 100 nodes per ring.

CHAPTER 2
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RPR Operation

RPR technology uses a dual counter rotating fiber ring topology.both rings
inner and outer are used to transport working traffic between nodes.By utilizing both
fibers,instead of keeping a spare fiber for protection.RPR utilizes the total available ring
bandwidth.these fibers or ringlets are also used to carry control messages.control message
flow in the opposite direction of the traffic that they represent.

Outer Ring

Inner Ring
Control
Outer Ring Control
Outer ring
Control
Inner Ring
Control
Inner Ring

Figure 1.RPR Terminology

By using bandwidth-control messages,a RPR node can be dynamically
negotiate for bandwidth with the other nodes on the ring.RPR has the ability to
differentiate between low-and high-priority packets.just like other quality of service(QoS)
aware systems,nodes have the ability to transmit high-priority packets before those of low
priority .In addition ,RPR nodes also have a transit path,through which packets destined
to downstream nodes on the ring flow.With a transit buffer capable of holding multiple
packets,RPR nodes have the ability to transmit higher-priority packets while temporarily
holding other lower priority packets in the transmit buffer.Nodes with smaller transit
buffers can use bandwidth-control messages to ensure that bandwidth reserved for high
priority services stays available.
The RPR MAC

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One of the basic building blocks of RPR is Media Access Control(MAC).As a
layer-2 network protocol,the MAC layer contains much of the functionality for the RPR
network.the RPR MAC is responsible for providing access to the fiber media.The RPR
MAC can receive,transit and transmit packets.
To East
To West From West Fiber Fiber
Fiber

Receive Transit Path TX BW

Decision Control

TX Topology
BW Protection

To Host From Host

To Host From Host

Figure 2. MAC Block Diagram

Recieve Decision: Every station has a 48-bit MAC address.The MAC will receive any
packets with a matching destination address.The MAC can receive both unicast and multi
cast packets.Multi cast packets are copied to the host and allowed to continue through the
transit path.Matching unicast packets are stripped from the ring and do not consume
bandwidth on downstream spans.There are used to control packets that are meant for the
neighboring node;these packets do not need a destination or source address.
Transit Path: Nodes with a non-matching destination address are allowed to continue
circulating around the ring.Unlike point-to-point protocols such as Ethernet,RPR packets
undergo minimal processing per hop on a ring.RPR packets are only inspected for a
matching address and header errors(TTL=0,parity,CRC).
Transmit and Bandwidth Controls: The RPR MAC can transmit both high-and-low
priority packets. The bandwidth algorithm controls whether a node is within its negotiated
bandwidth allotment for low-priority packets. High-priority packets are not subject to the
bandwidth-control algorithm.
Protection: RPR has the ability to protect the network from single span(node or fibre)
failures. When a failure occurs, protection massages are quickly dispatched. RPR has two
protection mechanisms:
Wrapping: Nodes neighbouring the failed by wrapping traffic around to the other
fiber(ringlet). This mechanism requries that only two nodes participate in the protection
event. Other nodes on the ring can send traffic as normal.
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Steering: the protection mechnasim all nodes of the ring of the failed span. Every node
on the ring will adjust their topolgy maps to avoid this span. Regardless of the protection
mechanism used, the ring will be protected within 50ms.
Topology Discovery: RPR has a topology discovery mechnasim that allows nodes on the
ring to be inserted/removed without manual management intervention. After a node joins
a ring, it will circulate a topology discovery message to learn the MAC addresses of the
other stations. Nodes also send thses messages periodically (1 to 10 seconds). Each node
that recives a topolgy message appends its MAC adress and passes ot to its neighbour.
Eventually, the packet returns to its source with a topology map(list of addresses) of the
ring.
Physical Layer
RPR packet can be tansported over both SONET and Ethernet physical layers.
The SONET/SDH physical layer offers robust error and performance monitoring. RPR
packets can be encapsulated within the synchronous payload envelope(SPE) using a high-
level data-link control (HDLC)-like or generic framing protocol (GFP) enscapsulation. A
robust Layer-1 protocol, SONET/SDH provides information such as loss of signal and
signal degarde for use by the RPR protection mechnasim. When using a SONET/SDH
physical layer, RPR can be carried over SONET/SDH TDM transport or dark fiber.
MAC Frame format Figure 3. RPR Mac frame
Destination Address
Source Address
Payload Type

Flow ID
C E
E
TTL
Header Error Check
Payload
CRC

Destination Address: This one or six byte address(see dual mode addressing) is the
MAC address of the ring node to which the frame is being transmitted, and therefore
doesnot change from link to link on the ring. This address can also be a broadcast address.

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Source Address: This one or six byte address is the address of the ring node from which
the frame is being transmitted, and therefore also doesnot change from link to link.
Payload Type: This two byte field tells the system what type of the payload foolows the
RPR field. For example MPEG,ATM or Ethernet.
Class of service(CoS): This three byte CoS field allows the identification of up to eight
Classes of services, including Expedited Forwarding(EF), six levels of Assured
Forwarding(AFI through AF6), and Best Effort(BE).
Extension(E) Bit: This field indicates that there is an extension to the RPT header. This
allows for fields that may be added in the future.
Time To Live(TTL): This one byte TTl field is included to allow the RPT ring topology.
It ensures that under no circumstances do RPT frames continue to circulate in a loop
indefinitely.
Flow ID(optional): The 20 bit follow ID field maps a virtual connection from ingress to
egress over the RPT ring. It allows the simple manual or automatic setup of connection
oriented services such as Tme Division Multiplexed(TDM) circuit emulated services and
Ethernet virtual leased lines through the packet-switched network
Header Error Check(HEC): Borrowing a concept from ATM, the two byte Header
Error Check(checksum) provides a way to test the integrity of the header, allowing for
persistent delivery of frames despite errors in the payload.
Cyclic Redundancy Check(CRC): The four byte (32 byte) Cyclic Redundancy
Check(CRC-32) works differently in RPT than it does for standard Ethernet.

Chapter 3
Comparing RPR to Other Solutions

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Resilient Packet Ring(RPR) technology was designed to combine SONET’s
carrier-class functionalities with Ethernet’s high bandwidth utilization and granularity.
Additionally, RPR technology offers fairness that has been lacking in today’s Ethernet
solutions.

The following table summarizes the differences between traditional Ethernet and RPR:
Table 2. Comparison between Gigabit Ethernet and RPR
GIGABIT ETHERNET RPR
Enterprise-class equipment Carrier-class equipment
Data dervice only Data, circuit or video service
Point-to-point or mesh topology(No Rings) Point-to-point,linear,ring,or mesh topology
Protection in 50 seconds Protection in 50 milliseconds or less
Simple management Full FCAPS management
Limited scalability 254 nodes per ring,multiple rings

The following table compares SONET/SDH to RPT

Table 3 Comparison between SONET/SDH and RPT
SONET/SDH
Manual topology configuration
16 nodes per ring
Fixed, dedicated management bandwidth
Time division multiplexing
Manual provisioning of bandwidth and
routes
No service class awareness
Fixed direction traffic routing
All traffic is potected
50% of all bandwidth reserved-unused-for
protection
Protection per bi-directinal span
RPT
Auto-topology discovery
254 nodes ring
Management bandwidth used as needed
Statistical multiplexing
Manual or dynamic provisioning
Differentiated services in eight classes
Least-cost traffic routing
Per-connection protection
Bandwidth reserved as neede,but still
usable by unprotected services
Per-fiber protection

Chapter 4
Technical aspects of RPR

Technical aspects of RPR are multicast, spatial reuse,fairness,fast protection and quality
of services
Multicast
One RPR multicast packet can be transmitted around the ring and can be recived
by multiple nodes. Mesh topologies requries multicast packets to be replicated over all
possible paths,washing bandwidth.
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Spatial Reuse
RPT has the ability to switch traffic over multiple spans of the rings
simultaneously. Hence, the bandwidth on a particular span between ring nodes is utilized
asynchronously with regard to the the bandwidth to be added or dropped on a span-by-
span basis, which ensures maximum utilization of bandwidth in the ring, especially when
traffic patterns are highly distributed.

D to A traffic A to B traffic
A
D to A traffic

D B

C to D traffic B to C traffic
C

Figure 4. RPR Spatial Reuse

Fairness
Fairness is one of the most important features in carrier-class networks. Fairness is
achieved when the traffic characteristics of two service flows that have the same service
lavel agreement (SLA) are identical, regardless of their network source and destination.

The RPR protocol can guarantee fairness across the metropolitan network. Each
node on the metro ring executes an algorithm designed to ensure that each node on the
ring will get its fari share of bandwidth, which is greater than their fair share on local ring
segments, as long as it doesn’t affect other ring nodes. More specifically, the ring
supports weighted fairness, proportional to the bandwidth each user buys.

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Before employing the fairness algorithm, all nodes transmit at their peak usage
rate. At some point Node 1 experience congestion and requests upstream nodes to their
transmission rate to their allowed rate. After convergence, each node will receive its fair
share of bandwidth, while nodes that can locally transmit higher rates. Like node 2 and 3,
without generating congestion on other nodes, continue to transmit their peak usage rate.

Other data optimized technologies, such as Ethernet, do not provide the carrier-
class fairness guaranteed in RPR-based networks. Ethernet switches prioritize traffic
locally, on every interface on the ring, thus creating unfair conditions for traffic that has
to traverse several nodes on its way to the destination node.

In summary, RPR’s fast protection and restoration capability prevents service loss
for high priority critical traffic. And just as SONET does, RPR enables carriers to
continue to support their existing critical traffic over a data optimized network, without
compromising their guaranteed 99.999% service availability.

Quality of Service
Quality of Service(Qos) is requried in order to let a carrier effectively charge for
the services it provides. ATM promised to deliver multiple services due to its rich QoS
feature set. However, a carrier’s service offering should be simple. Customers should
clearly understand the service differentiators for which thay are requried to pay.

Often, a too rich QoS feature set causes a complicated and incomprehensible
service offering. Futhermore, differnet service quaility features are requried for different
types of applications. Data trasfer applications requrie low packet loss rate, while real-
time applications, such as voice, require low latency and low delay delay variation.

There are several parameters that more than others govern the cahracteristics of a
delivered service: Service availability, delay,delay variation and packet loss rate. Service
availability depends on the reliability of the network equipment, as well as on the network
survivability characteristics. Delay occurs in a network when a packet waits in a switch
queue for other packets to pass. Delay variation is the difference in delay of several
packets belonging to a common traffic flow. High-frequency delay variation is called
jitter while low-frequency delay variation is called wander.

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The most important parameter for a carrier selling bandwidth services is service
availabilty. In order to remain competitive, acarrier must guarantee “five-nines”
(99.999%) service availability, irrespective of other service characteristics. The respective
requirement from the network is that all traffic flows should remain active underany
circumstances, including during a protection event. During a protection event, and until
high layer protocols converge, the available bandwidth on an OC-192 RPR ring reduces
to 10 Gbps. In order to guarantee service for every traffic flow under thses circumstances,
a portion of each flow’s bandwidth should be allocated on this guranteed throughput. This
way, even during a protection event, service availabilty is guaranteed and none of the
services is preempted.

Traffic dealy is a minor issue in high throughput rings. An end-to-end delay of

several tens of milliseconds is usually regraded as acceptable, while in an OC-192 ring,
the expected delay for the longest Ethernet frames (1518 bytes) is shorter by three orders
of magnitude(about 5(sec)).

Delay variation control is essential to ensure proper transport of TDM services

over an RPR ring. Control can be achieved by synchronizing the nodes on the RPR ring
by a common timing source.

Fast Protection and Restoration.

The feature that more than any other makes RPR a carrier-class technology is its
fast self-healing capability which allows the ring to atomatically recover from a fibre cut
or node failure. This is done by wrapping traffic onto the alternate fiber within the
SONET-class 50msec restoration timeframe. RPR technology provides carriers with more
than SONET-class fast protection and performance monitoring capabilites; it also enables
tham to achieve it without dedicating protection bandwidth, as in the case of SONET,
thus eliminating the need to sacrifice 50% of the ring bandwidth for protection.

Two mechanisms are proposed for fast protection in the RPR MAC – Wrap and
Steer. Each of these machanisms has its own advantages and limitaions, and both can be
used on a an RPR ring utilizing the Selectively Wrap Independent Steer (SWIS) scheme

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Chapter 5
RPR Market Development

ISP Network
Without barriers of traditional SONET/SDH infrastructures, RPR solutions are
helping ISPs to deliver reliable internet services (such and IP and video) and addresss the
growing bandwidth service requirements for the next generation intra-point of presence
(POP), exchange point, and server farm/storage applications.

Regional Metro Network

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RPR enables regional metro networks designed internet services (such as IP,
VoIP and video) to the metro. RPR regional metro solutions are available for transport
over dark fiber, over wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), and over SONET/SDH,
cable MSO, and enterprise/campus MANs

Metro Access Networks

RPR enables metro access solutions for service providers looking to deliver
internet services (such as IP, VoIP and VPN) to metro access networks with direct
Ethernet connectivity for multi-tenant/multidwelling customers and edge
programmability.

Chapter 6
Summary of features and benefits of RPR

RPR provides the foolowing benefits to service provider networks:

• Packets-optimized, Layer-1 independent protocol that allows the integration of

DWDM, transport, switching and routing functions in a single platform.
• Differentiated dara services, with advanced QoS mechanisms.
• Point-to-point and multipoint services.

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• Topology flexibilty, including the ability to have spans running at different data
rates and with differnet numbers of fibers and wavelengths as well as the ability to
have asymmetry in the bandwidth.
• End-to-end networking through a standard, heterogeneous IP/MPLS network.
• Maximum utilization of the fiber bandwidth under both normal and protection-
switched conditions.
• Minimum disruption of user services during a protection-switching event.
Specifically, full restoration of all.
• Protected service well within the 50-millisecond period specified by SONET and
SDH standards.
• Maximum configurability of the switch as to its behavior under all conditions.
• Significantly simplified network operations vs. ATM and SONET/SDH
approches.
• Faster deployment of services.

Chapter 7
Conculsion

The main objective of Resilient Packet Ring technology is to enable a ture

alternative to SONET transport for packet networks, providing carriers with resiliency,
fast protection and restoration and performance monitoring comparable to those of
SONET networks.

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RPR was designed to combine SONET strengths of high availability, reliability
and TDM services support, with Ethernet’s low-cost, superior bandwidth utilization and
high service granularity characteristics.
Unlike next-generation SONET solutions that integrate both transport and data
switching in the network element, RPR is a transport technology that fits into existiing
carrier’s operation model, this tremendously reduces the requried operational expenses in
deployment as well as the maintenance expenses associated with the manual provisioning
process of todays’s transport networks.
RPRs provide a reliable, efficient and service-aware transport ofr both enterprise
and service-provider networks.
RPR is being promoted and standardized by industry leaders as well as by
innovative startup companies, and is positioned to take a major role in deployment of next
generation carrier-class networks.

References
1. www.iec.org
2. www.ieee.org
3. Data Networks by Dimitri Bertsekas and Robert Gallagar.
4. Computer Networks by Andrew .S. and Taneabaum.
5. Computer Network – A system approach by Larry.L.Petterson and Bruces David.

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