Hierarchical interworking of draft Kompella and draft Lasserre approaches for VPLS

VPLS is an emerging technology for provider provisioned layer-2 VPN over MPLS. Two leading IETF drafts define VPLS using different approaches; debates on standardization are going on. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical interworking architecture of the two approaches to combine their advantages in a non-overlapping, hierarchical way. An efficient LDP-based auto-discovery is also proposed to assist draft Lasserre approach within an AS. We show that the proposed architecture provides lower complexity, higher scalability, and security, and is more efficient than either one of the two drafts' approaches. We also show that the proposed LDP-based auto-discovery is more efficient than draft Kompella's BGP approach and draft Stein's LDP approach from the perspectives on the number of overhead packets, and the average response time for member discovery