COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM DESIGN
A Novel Stateful PCE-Cloud Based Control
Architecture of Optical Networks for Cloud Services
Qin Panke1,2*, Chen Xue1, Wang Lei1, Wang Liqian1
1
State Key Lab of Information Photonics and Optical Communications, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Beijing 100876, China
2
College of Computer Science and Technology, Henan Polytechnic University, Jiaozuo, Henan, 454000, China
Abstract: The next-generation optical network
is a service oriented network, which could be
delivered by utilizing the generalized multi-
protocol label switching (GMPLS) based con-
trol plane to realize lots of intelligent features
such as rapid provisioning, automated protec-
tion and restoration (P&R), efficient resource
allocation, and support for different quality
of service (QoS) requirements. In this paper,
we propose a novel stateful PCE-cloud (SPC)
based architecture of GMPLS optical networks
for cloud services. The cloud computing tech-
nologies (e.g. virtualization and parallel com-
puting) are applied to the construction of SPC
for improving the reliability and maximizing
resource utilization. The functions of SPC and
GMPLS based control plane are expanded
according to the features of cloud services for
different QoS requirements. The architecture
and detailed description of the components of
SPC are provided. Different potential coopera-
tion relationships between public stateful PCE
cloud (PSPC) and region stateful PCE cloud
(RSPC) are investigated. Moreover, we pres-
ent the policy-enabled and constraint-based
routing scheme base on the cooperation of
PSPC and RSPC. Simulation results for veri-
fying the performance of routing and control
plane reliability are analyzed.
Keywords: optical networks; control plane;
GMPLS; stateful PCE; cloud computing; QoS
117
I. INTRODUCTION
Strongly promoted by the leading industrial
companies, cloud computing becomes in-
creasingly popular in recent years [1]. Cloud
computing is Internet-based computing, where
shared resources (e.g., infrastructure, platform,
software, data, etc.) are provided to users
on-demand, like a public utility [2]. In addi-
tion, the emerging cloud computing applica-
tions are presenting significantly different with
the conventional Internet applications. For ex-
ample, cloud computing applications can dif-
fer with respect to granularity of traffic flows
and traffic characteristics such as required data
transaction bandwidth, acceptable delay and
packet loss[3]. Therefore, cloud computing
networks not only need to satisfy the elastic
resources requirement of new applications but
also support for different quality of service
(QoS) requirements. The typical application
scenarios of cloud networks are data center to
data center and end users to data center con-
nectivity [4-5], depicted in Fig 1. Based on a
scan of aforementioned application scenarios,
we have identified the requirements for cloud
computing networks which should provide
functionality for efficient management of
computational, storage and network resources.
Meanwhile, it is designed to address the fol-
lowing challenges: on-demand setup, response
China Communications • October 2015
time and latency sensitive, scalability, dynam-
ic provisioning and reconfiguration, robustness
and security [5]. In practice this means that
cloud networks infrastructure has to be multi-
service which is able to support several types
of traffic with different requirements in terms
of QoS.
Optical networks enhanced with gener-
alized multi-protocol label switching (GM-
PLS) based protocols and path computation
elements (PCE) offer the opportunity to im-
prove the efficiency and flexibility of network
control and management [6]. Meanwhile, the
ability to transfer huge data volumes with low
latency has made optical networks the de facto
standard to connect data centers that provid-
ing computing and storage services in cloud
computing networks [5]. The optical networks
control plane base on GMPLS is composed
of a set of communication and control net-
work element entities [7]. It could realize the
connection establishment, release, monitor
and maintenance. In addition, it could realize
optical networks restoration, routing control,
signaling protocols, resource management and
policy control. Consequently, GMPLS optical
networks are able to meet the dynamic and
ultra-high bandwidth requirements of stringent
distributed applications delivered from the da-
tacenters and end users.
Recently, much prior works have also fo-
cused on the technology of GMPLS control
plane for providing more flexible network
control and management. The proposed Hi-
erarchical PCE architecture (HPA) [8, 9],
represents an attractive solution to enable both
effective domain sequence computation and
optimal end-to-end path computation. Zhang
et al [10-13] proposed dual routing engine
(DRE) PCE architecture which can not only
employ distributed control approaches to re-
alize fast routing and path establishment but
also provide centralized path computation
capabilities to accomplish effective resource
allocation and routing optimization with mul-
tiple constraints. Software defined networking
(SDN) and OpenFlow protocol is another
good choice of constructing cloud computing
China Communications • October 2015
networks, which allow operators to control the
network using software running on a network This paper presents
operating system within an external control- the motivation, design
ler, provide the maximum flexibility for the and evaluation of SPC
which is a novel state-
operator to control a network, and match the
ful PCE-cloud based
carrier’s preferences given its centralized ar- architecture of GMPLS
chitecture, simplicity and manageability [14]. optical networks for
However, in our opinion, the stateful PCE cloud services.
and GMPLS control plane is more suitable
for cloud computing networks. Due to that it
has experienced a decade of development and
standardization efforts and it is more mature
than SDN/OpenFlow for optical networking,
for the moment.
However, with the optical networks de-
velop toward to larger scale, wider coverage
and multi-domain, conventional control plane
with limited resources provision ability and
poor reliability make policy-enabled and con-
straint-based path computation become more
and more difficult [15]. Moreover, convention-
al control plane cannot provide flexible and
scalable functions for different QoS require-
ment of cloud services.
The main contributions of this paper are as
follows:
1) We propose a novel stateful PCE-cloud
(SPC) based architecture of GMPLS optical
networks which is realized by centralizing
distributed stateful PCEs in multiple neighbor
domains to form stateful PCE datacenter for
providing powerful computing and storage
capability. We expanded the functions of tradi-
tional GMPLS control plane according to dif-
Fig.1 Cloud computing services networks
118
 ferent QoS requirements of cloud services. In
addition, we provide the components and fea-
tures of the three layers architecture of SPC.
Different potential cooperation relationships
between public stateful PCE cloud (PSPC)
and region stateful PCE cloud (RSPC) are in-
vestigated. Meanwhile, we provide the routing
scheme base on PSPC and RSPC.
2) We apply the cloud computing technolo-
gy (e.g., virtualization, parallel computing and
shard storage) to SPC for providing elastic and
on-demand resources provision. It could not
only realize optimal policy-enabled and con-
straint-based path computing but also resource
effective allocation, dynamic configuration
and maximal utilization.
The rest of this paper is organized as fol-
lows. The proposed SPC architecture is given
in Section II. The routing scheme base on co-
operation of PSPC and RSPC is presented in
Section III. The network performance is sim-
ulated in Section IV. Section V concludes the
paper.
II. STATEFUL PCE-CLOUD BASED
ARCHITECTURE OF GMPLS OPTICAL
NETWORKS
2.1 Architecture of stateful PCE-
cloud
In this section, we provide an overall descrip-
Fig.2 Logically view of SPC and GMPLS-based optical networks
119
tion of the proposed SPC architecture which is
the improved centralized control plane of the
GMPLS optical networks for cloud services.
Next, we provide a detailed description of the
components of PSPC and RSPC. Moreover,
we interpret the cooperation relationships be-
tween PSPC and RSPC.
The SPC can be logically viewed in three
layers, depicted in Fig.2. It is composed of
conventional control plane with path com-
puting element agents (PCEAs), PSPC and
RSPC. In this architecture the conventional
distributed PCEs in multi-domains are re-
placed by PCEA. The conventional control
plane with PCEAs offers general routing func-
tions including link state advertisement, topol-
ogy update and so on. PCEA is the communi-
cation agent of label switching router (LSRs)
in the internal of a domain which delivers the
functions of communication between path
computation client (PCC) and RSPC with path
communication element protocol (PCEP). It
collects the inter-domain information regard-
ing traffic engine, network state, the set of
active paths and their reserved resources from
the PCC of LSR. Moreover, it periodically no-
tifies the collected information to RSPC.
The conventional distributed stateful PCEs
in multi-domains are centralized and organized
by cloud computing technology (e.g. virtual-
ization and parallel computing) to form RSPC
and PSPC for centralizing computing and
storage capacity. The PSPC and RSPCs coop-
erate with each other to response to the path
computing requests of end users. The RSPC
is responsible for the path computing request
of its management domains. The PSPC as-
sists the RSPC to accomplish path computing
when routing request beyond the management
domains of anyone RSPC or the single RSPC
with limited resources make it cannot meet the
requirements of requests.
The detailed architecture of SPC is illus-
trated in Fig.3. The PSPC and RSPC are all
comprised of control plane manager (CPM),
path computing element manager (PCEM),
task tracker (PCETT) and centralized shared
database (CSD). CPM is the manager of the
China Communications • October 2015
SPC and provides functions of communication
and system status monitor. Moreover, CPM
is responsible for maintaining the synchroni- PCEM
Routing Policy Controller Interface
PCETT
Routing
calculation LSPD
zation of TED and LSPD between PCCs and PM PR JM DCA Path
computation
SPC. The hardware and software resources Map/Reduce UA
constrain
CSO DR TED
are pooled by OpenStack module of CPM.
conditions
LoadBalance PC

Algorithms
Different physical and virtual resources are SSE BE CM MP

dynamically assigned and reassigned accord- OpenStack

VMs
CPM TDB

ing to the demands of requests by OpenStack. Public Stateful PCE-cloud

PCEM manages the tasks from users, performs

PCEP
PCEP
map-reduce operation for parallel computing Region Stateful

PCEP
Region Stateful

Control Plane
PCE-cloud PCE-cloud

according to specified routing policy and as-

signs computing tasks to PCETTs. PCETT PCEM PCETT
Routing Policy Controller Interface Routing
calculation LSPD
is the actual path computing unit. PCETTs PM PR JM
DCA Path
computation

collaborate with each other to processing the Map/Reduce

UA
constrain
CSO DR
conditions
path computing request through parallel com- PC TED

SSE BE LoadBalance MP Algorithms

puting technology. PCEM and PCETT run on
the virtual machines (VM) which dynamically OpenStack
VMs
CPM
TDB

allocated by the OpenStack. Region Stateful PCE-cloud

PCEP
PCEP
2.2 Region stateful PCE cloud PCEA PCEA

PCC PCC
In this subsection, as shown in Fig 4, we pro- PCC CC2 CC4 PCC
PCC
CC2 PCC
CC1 E-NNI
PCC
vide a detailed description of the RSPC which CC3
CC1
CC3

CCI
is mainly comprised of CPM, PCEM and CCI

E-NNI
PCETT divided by major function. NE2 NE2
NE4
NE1 I-NNI NE1 I-NNI
NE3 NE3

2.2.1 Control plane manager

CPM is the internal management unit of
RSPC. The distributed PCEs hardware re- Fig.3 Functional architecture of SPC and GMPLS optical networks
sources are pooled by OpenStack of CPM
based on cluster technology. The virtualization
of SPC has two meanings, on one hand, the
distributed hardware of PCEs are centralized
and pooled by SPC to a unified resource for
providing infinity computing and transparent
scalability ability. In other words, the virtual-
ization base this point means many to one. On
the other hand, the computing resources are
pooled to serve multiple consumers using a
multi-tenant model with different physical and
virtual resources dynamically assigned and re-
assigned according to user demands. There is a
sense of location independence in that the user  
generally has no control or knowledge over
the exact location of the provided resources
Fig.4 Detailed function modules of RSPC
but may be able to specify location at a higher
level of abstraction (e.g., different cloud com- alization base this point means one to many.
puting datacenter). In other words, the virtu- Accordingly, the proposed architecture could

China Communications • October 2015 120

 provide elastic computing resources for users.
CPM is comprised of six component modules.
The component modules are described as fol-
lowing.
PCEA is the communication interface
which offers the function of interacting be-
tween inter-domain PCEA and PSPC with
EPCEP. The messages include received path
computing requests, sent path computing re-
sults, TED and LSPD.
OpenStack is the VM manager of the
RSPC. It dynamically creates VMs with spec-
ified functions (e.g., PCEM and PCETT) from
the resources pools according to the load of
applications or the special resources demands
of end users. In contrast, it also destroys VMs
according to application load and recycling
resources back to resources pools. In addition,
it makes all PCE hardware servers work to-
gether as a whole base on cluster technology.
Moreover, it is also responsible for efficiently
multiplexes the hardware resources of a single
server among VMs. Consequently, with the
help of OpenStack that RSPC makes PCE re-
sources are pooled as a whole to serve multi-
ple users with different physical and virtual re-
sources dynamically assigned and reassigned
according to the demands of users.
PCE calculation load monitor and PCE
domain name system (DNS) perform regular
statistical virtual PCE (vPCE) load informa-
tion (e.g. CPU and memory occupancy) and
announce the CPM for unified management
(e.g., create new VMs, destroy excess VMs
or load migration between different hardware
or vPCE). Meanwhile, the function module
of PCE DNS is responsible for the search and
positioning the proper vPCE for CPM.
Routing policy choice and generator re-
ceives the routing policy tables from manager
plane and PSPC. At the same time, it generates
path computing policies for the PCEM and
PCETT according to the routing policy tables.
2.2.2 PCE manager
PCEM is the manager unit of RSPC for path
computing tasks and PCETTs. As shown in
Fig 5, on one hand, it accepts the original path
computing requests from PCEAs of different
domains and divides the tasks to equivalent
fragments by mapping process according to
the workload of the tasks, or it combines the
calculation results from different PCETTs
for the same tasks. On the other hand, it allo-
cates the task fragments to multiple PCETTs
according to their load state. Moreover, it is
responsible for notifying OpenStack to create
new PCTEE VMs from hardware resources
pool if PCETTs cannot satisfy path computing
requirements. In Fig 3, PCEM is comprised
of three set modules. The component modules
are described as following.

PCETT

MP
Process route
calculation for PCEM

RAM Job
new or
Manager DR
Job processing
sort processing
Manager new
combine() Update TDB
map()
partition()
RAM reduce
Task1
PCEM VM M1 Job Manager
Task2
outputfromat
Task3 reduce
Region 1 PCEM VM R1 Map/Reduce
Assgin
Region 2 PCETTS
Task4
PCEM VM M2 ……
Region n map
Task5 PCEM VM R2 Task X no
Task DB
Whole LSP Update TDB
…… Task Y
……
yes
……
PCEM VM MN PCEM VM RN Task Z
Update TED,
LSPD

Fig.5 Task process flow chart of PCEM

121 China Communications • October 2015

 Controller includes job manager (JM),
Map/Reduce and load balancer (LB) mod-
ules. LB regularly counts load information of
PCEM and notifies CPM for unified manage-
ment. JM manager is responsible for judging
the type of the task (e.g., intra-domain or
inter-domain path computing), updating TDB
and assigning tasks to PCETTs cooperate with
LB.
Routing includes policy parser (PP), path
provisioning (PR), dynamic routing (DR)
and bandwidth engine (BE) modules. The PP
module deals with all kinds of routing pol-
icies which are great important to solve the
special multi-constraint routing requests. The
PR module calculates the offline routes for
all foreseen connections according to a traffic
matrix. The DR module evaluates the route
for a single LSP request at a time, expressed
in terms of source and destination nodes and
bandwidth requirements. The BE module is
invoked to make the higher-priority LSP re-
quired bandwidth available.
Interface includes communication agent
(CA), message parser (MP) and database
agent (DA) modules. The CA is the external
communication interface to interact with re-
lated PCEA and CMP of PSPC. The MP is re-
sponsible to parse the different messages from
CA and deliver them to corresponding process
modules. The DA module is invoked to access
to database (e.g., TED, LSPD and TDB).
2.2.3 PCE task tracker
PCETT is the path computing execution unit
of the RSPC. It performs path computing
tasks allocated by PCEM. In Fig 3, PCETT is
comprised of two set modules. The component
modules are described as following.
Routing calculation includes policy parser
(PP) and path computing (PC). The PP module
deals with all kinds of routing policies which
are great importance to solve multi-constraint
routing. The PC module performs path com-
puting according to routing policy.
Interface includes communication agent
(CA), message parser (MP) and database agent
(DA) modules which functions are the same as
China Communications • October 2015
PCEM.
2.2.4 Shared storage
Shard storage is the centralized database of
RSPC. It stores the network topology (i.e., TE
links and nodes), network resource informa-
tion (i.e., TE attributes), the set of active paths
and their reserved resources. It also maintains
information regarding LSPs under construc-
tion in order to reduce churn and resource
contention. Furthermore, it stores all the task
information and states under processing by
the RSPC. All of PCEMs and PCETTs could
access the shard storage by unified interface.
2.3 Public stateful PCE cloud
The composition and structure only have one
different between RSPC and PSPC which is
the set of controller. The controller of PSPC
has region stateful PCE cloud manager (RSP-
CM) for managing all of the RSPCs. The
RSPCM is used for monitoring the load state
of the RSPCs and assisting RSPC to perform
path computing. The PSPC holds the TED
and LSPD of gateways consisting of boundary
nodes (BNs) and inter-domain links but does
not hold the topology map of connectivity of
interior BNs. However, it could request and
maintain partial intra-domain information
when collaborate with RSPCs for fast cross-re-
gion path computing. Nonetheless, the RSPCs
are insensible of the integral topology outside
its own control domains.
Moreover, the cooperation relationship be-
tween PSPC and RSPC is a key issue of SPC,
which helps to achieve maximal resources
utilization, load balancing, policy-enabled and
constraint-based path computing.
Table I Policy-enabled and constraint-based path computation instances
Policy application scenarios Description
Load balancing Balance the traffic load of whole network
Maximizes utilization as long as further gain in uti-
Max-min fair share lization is not achieved by penalizing fair share of
applications
Policy configured paths Centrally administer configured paths
Provider selection policy To be applied in multi-provider topologies
Policy based constraints Provide constraints in a path computation request
122
 Firstly, the PSPC cooperates with RSPCs
to realize cross multiple regions path com-
puting. In addition, the PSPC provides global
policy-enabled and constraint-based proposal
for RSPCs. In order to get the optimal routing
path the control plane should involve global
networks topology and current traffic engi-
neering. However, PSPC is more suitable than
RSPC for the domain sequence selection and
global routing policies generator. In contrast,
RSPC is more suitable than PSPC for the in-
tra-domain path computing [16]. Consequent-
ly, the optimal end-to-end path computing
should be got from the cooperation between
PSPC and RSPC. Table I lists some typical
policy-enable and constraint-based applica-
tion instances that may be exerted to the SPC
architecture. Effective combinations of the
above scenarios as well as possible new sce-
narios could occur in the real networks.
Secondly, the PSPC delivers external com-
puting and storage resources for RSPCs, there-
fore, make RSPCs could accommodate the
bursty nature of the traffic.
Thirdly, the PSPC delivers security backup
for RSPCs. The cooperation mechanisms make
it possible that PSPC could provide backup
Load Balancer
PCEA CPM
& PCE DNS
Computation load
High computation load
High computation load
Start PCEM-Y
Start PCEM-Y
Start PCETT-N
Start PCETT-N
PCEM-Y started
PCEM-Y started
PCETT-N started
PCETT-N started
Add PCEM-Y
Add PCETT-N
PC request
PCEM request
PCEM-Y
Policy-enable
Constrain-based
PC result PC result
Fig.6 Path computing procedure
123
for RSPCs to enhance the routing security and
reliability, since they both satisfy the demands
of path computation from customers. The path
computing tasks could be switched to PSPC as
soon as the RSPCs failure.
Fourthly, the PSPC could cooperate with
RSPCs in multi-layer and multi-region mode,
it is necessary for RSPCs to collaborate with
PSPC when the requirements for path com-
putation happen in multi-layer and multi-re-
gion optical networks. PSPC could be shared
among several regions or layers and make
the best use of the inter-region and inter-layer
network resources, so it is more suitable for
inter-region or inter-layer path computation.
III. ROUTING SCHEME BASED ON SPC
In this section, we provide a detailed descrip-
tion of the routing scheme of SPC based GM-
PLS optical networks.
The routing procedure not only includes
path computation, but also includes policies
and constrains aware. All of them are accom-
plished by the collaboration of PSPC and
RSPCs. On the one hand, the routing policies
are generated by manager plane and the path
PCEM-X PCEM-Y PCETT-M PCETT-N
Type judgement
Task record
Map process
PCETT selection
PCETT request
PCETT-M
PCETT-N PC request
fragment-1
PC request
Task update fragment-2
Reduce process PC result
fragment-1 PC result
fragment-2
China Communications • October 2015
computation constrains are proposed by end
users or services. Different policies will be
obtained by different part of the control which
means PSPC obtains the global routing poli-
cies and RSPC obtains the region routing poli-
cies. In light of this, PSPC is more suitable for
global routing policies assignment and RSPC
is suitable for routing policies analysis and
implements.
On the other hand, RSPC is responsible
for the path computing from all the domains
which it controls. PSPC is responsible for the
path computing requests which across mul-
tiple RSPCs control regions. The dynamic
path computing requests are sent to RSPC by
PCEAs. RSPC maintains the traffic informa-
tion under its control domains. It can meet the
path computing requests which source and
destination nodes are all in its control region.
However, if the source and destination nodes
are out of the control region of a single RSPC,
the request will be send to PSPC. PSPC firstly
calculates the sequence of the RSPCs which
the routing across. Then PSPC parallel sends
path computing requests to all of the RSPCs
in the sequence. Finally, it’s also responsible
for assembling the segments to the whole path
when it gets all of the segment results.
The messages exchanged between the dif-
ferent elements of the RSPC in path computa-
tion are displayed in Fig 6. It can be observed,
that the CPM is responsible for checking the
different quality parameters to the deployed
vPCE which is PCEM or PCETT. Once these
quality parameters are received, the CPM is
the responsible to determine whether a new
vPCE is required. If a vPCE is selected to be
deployed, the OpenStack module will deploy
a new virtual machine with the vPCE image,
will assign a new IP address to the vPCE and
once the vPCE is started, the CPM will notify
the new vPCE IP address to the load balancer
and PCE DNS module. Once a PCEA requires
a new path computation, CPM module will
first issue a DNS query to the load balancer &
PCE DNS module. The load balancer & PCE
DNS is responsible to load balance the differ-
ent vPCEs, so returns a single IP address cor-
China Communications • October 2015
responding to one of the vPCEs. Finally, the
path computation session will be addressed by
the assigned PCEM and PCETTs.
IV. PERFORMANCE AND ANALYSIS
To evaluate the performance of the SPC archi-
tecture, we use disperse event simulation tool
OMNet++ to develop SPC based architecture
of GMPLS optical networks. As show in Fig
7, the simulated network topology contains 6
domains and 46 nodes, and each link contains
16 wavelengths. The simulation supposes that
the request arrive between any node pair (s,
d) following Poisson process with arrival rate
of λ(s, d). The holding time of each call is ex-
ponentially distributed with unit mean. Four
typical PCE architectures are selected in the
comparison DPA, HPA, DRE and SPC.
In order to guarantee the sum of the com-
puting resources of all PCEs in the simulation
work is identical, we assign 16 PCE servers
for the four architectures. Each domain is de-
ployed with two PCE servers in DPA. A PCE
server is assigned for inter-domain path com-
puting which is the pPCE, the NORDUNet
domain is deployed with one PCE while each
domain of the rest deployed with two PCEs
which are the cPCEs in HPA. As for DRE each
PCE is divided into group engine and unit
engine. All PCEs are put together to form one
PSPC and two RSPCs for centralized comput-
NORDUNet Pionier
DFN
GEANT2
RedlRlS
GARR
Fig.7 MUPBED network topology
124
 ing resources providing in SPC. Furthermore,
both PCEM and PCETT VMs in the cloud
computing are created or destroyed according
to users demands. Suppose all the service re-
quests are lambda LSPs, and the LSR do not
have the capability of wavelength conversion
which means that wavelength continuity con-
straint is considered.
Cloud services in datacenter to datacen-
ter connectivity networks mainly include
high-availability cluster services, data backup,
service migration, load balancing (virtual ma-
chines migration) and application mobility et
al. Based on a scan of aforementioned cloud
services scenarios, we have identified the
requirements for GMPLS optical networks
which should provide the abilities of fast
cross-domain routing, low blocking proba-
bility, elastic resources provision and high
reliability. Accordingly, the simulations are
performed in response to the above four points
for cloud services.
In order to verify the routing performance
of SPC the first simulation we evaluate the
blocking probability and path provisioning
latency of different PCE architecture in path
computing. Three simulation scenarios of
different ratios between intra-domain and
inter-domain routing requests have been con-
ducted, which are 9:1, 1:1, and 1:9. In addi-
tion, the performance of elastic resources pro-
vision for different QoS requirement of cloud
services is verified from the different ratio of
(a) (b)
Fig.8 Path provision latency (a) intra-domain and inter-domain ratios is 9:1(b) intra-domain and inter-domain ratios is 1:1 (c) with in-
tra-domain and inter-domain ratios is 1:9
125
routing request between total and inter-do-
main.
From Fig 8 it can be seen that the path pro-
visioning latency increases with the increase
of traffic load for all four architectures. How-
ever, the performance of SPC gets better when
the ratio of intra-domain and inter-domain
decrease, which are illustrated in Fig 8(b) and
8(c). The reason is that SPC with virtualiza-
tion and parallel computing technology makes
better in computationally intensive cross
multi-domain path computing tasks. It shows
that the SPC could provide elastic resources
provision according to the QoS requirement of
different services and accommodate to differ-
ent application scenarios.
In order to verify the reliability of SPC we
evaluate the blocking probability and path
provision latency of different PCE architecture
in path computing. Two simulation scenarios
of different number of fault PCE server have
been conducted, which is 1 and 2. In addition,
this simulation also reflects the computing re-
sources occupied load balancing performance
of SPC from the comparison of path provision
latency between different scenarios. From Fig
9 and 10 it can be seen that the performance
of SPC with virtualization and load balancing
technology are not affected when individual
PCE services failure. But the performance of
the other architectures have greatly affected.
So the SPC significantly outperforms the other
architectures in reliability. These results illus-
(c)
China Communications • October 2015
trate that the SPC is a promising solution for
routing in the next generation dynamic GM-
PLS networks for cloud services.

V. CONCLUSION

This paper presents the motivation, design and

evaluation of SPC which is a novel stateful (a) (b)

PCE-cloud based architecture of GMPLS opti-

cal networks for cloud services. It is proposed
for datacenter to datacenter and end users to
data center connectivity and designed to meet
the QoS requirement of cloud services, ad-
dress the policy-enabled and constraint-based
routing problems of larger scale and multi-do-
main optical networks. Moreover, another
prime design target of the architecture is for
improving resources utilization and system
reliability of GMPLS control plane.
The proposed three layers architecture of
stateful PCE-cloud and GMPLS based control
plane delivering on the aforementioned goals
from centralizing distributed PCEs in multiple
neighbor domains to form resources pools and
cloud computing technologies are applied to
construct SPC. We expanded the functions
of conventional control plane for supporting
multiple routing policies and constrains parse.
Moreover, unified scalable function interfaces
are designed for future transparent extension.
Accordingly, the SPC based control plane
could provide elastic resources for different
QoS requirements of end users and adequate
for achieving resources utilization maximiza-
tion and reliability improvement. As can be
known from the simulation results, the SPC
could effectively address the multiple policies
and constraints based path computing and
optimal domain sequence selection problems
of multi-domain and larger scale optical net-
works. The improvement of routing perfor-
mance is obvious when the requested quantity
of inter-domain is much larger than intra-do-
main. Furthermore, the SPC significantly out-
performs the other architectures in reliability
is verified when PCE servers random and burst
malfunction.
Fig.9 Blocking probability (a) one PCE server faulty (b) two PCE servers faulty
(a) (b)
Fig.10 Path provisioning (a) one PCE server faulty (b) two PCE servers faulty
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study is supported by National Natural
Science Foundation of China（No. 61571061）
and Innovative Research Fund of Beijing
University of Posts and Telecommunications
(2015RC16).
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Biographies
Qin Panke, is a lecturer in the School of Computer
Science and Technology, Henan Polytechnic Univer-
sity. He received his Ph.D. degree from BUPT, P. R.
China, in 2015. His research interests include Next
Generation Optical Networks Architecture for Cloud
Services, Routing and Wavelength Assignment Prob-
lems in Optical Networks and so on. *The correspon-
dence author: E-mail: qinpanke@bupt.edu.cn
Chen Xue, received her master degree from Beijing
University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT),
P. R. China, in 1985. She is now a professor of the
Sate Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and
Optical Communications, BUPT. Her main research
interests focus on optical access networks and back-
bone optical transmission.
Wang Lei, is a lecturer in the State Key Laboratory
of Information of Photonics and Optical Communi-
cations, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommu-
nications (BUPT). He received his Ph.D. degree from
BUPT, P. R. China, in 2009. His current research in-
terests are in software defined optical transport and
access networks
Wang Liqian, is a lecturer in the State Key Labora-
tory of Information of Photonics and Optical Com-
munications, Beijing University of Posts and Telecom-
munications (BUPT). She received her Ph.D. degree
from BUPT, P. R. China, in 2009. Her current research
interests are in broadband access and network inte-
gration.
China Communications • October 2015