The Path Computation Element for the Network Service and Business Plane Computation of route offers and price modelling for inter-carrier services

Carriers usually deploy traffic engineering (TE) technologies coupled with network control plane protocol suites, such as MPLS and GMPLS, to offer value added network connectivity services to their customers. However, automated Quality of Service across multiple carriers still remains a challenge for Network Service Providers, and many stumbling blocks exist due to the complex integration of different business and operation systems (BSS/OSS). In this paper we discuss a specific aspect of the Network Service and Business Plane: the computation of route offers and the association of the price information with the standard route descriptions and metrics. Route offers are the prerequisite for the description of the potential components of an end-to-end inter-carrier network service. Route offers are a mandatory input data for a network service negotiation and its subsequent instantiation in the control and transport planes. To this purposes, this work proposes a Path Computation Element integrated with the service plane (Service PCE), which is capable of computing route offers with price information. The communication between the service plane and the Service PCE is realized via Path Computation Element Protocol. This protocol also needs extensions in this new framework, as structured price data are not supported by the standards.