Supporting Control Plane-enabled Transport Networks within ITU-T Next Generation Network (NGN) architecture

Next generation network (NGN) Release 1 is the ITU- T architecture for packet-switched networks that supports the provisioning of broadband and QoS-guaranteed multimedia services, such as Video on Demand and TV streaming, independently of the underlying network transport technologies. Control plane (CP)-enabled transport networks might be a candidate to support NGN services in the Metro/Core segment since are able to setup automatically connections. Typically, these networks are based on automatically switched optical network (ASON) architecture and/or on generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) protocol suite. This work presents a snapshot of the current status of standardization reached by the NGN architecture and proposes an NGN enhancement to include CP-enable transport networks among the NGN supported transport technologies. An NGN prototype implementing the proposed architectural enhancement is also presented as a proof of concept. The prototype highlights how set-up multimedia over IP (MoIP) services using GMPLS-controlled transport objects.