Emulation of GMPLS-controlled Ethernet Label Switching

Last decades bridged Ethernet has been the de facto standard layer 2 technology for LAN environments. This is mainly because it is easy to deploy, it has low cost and is relatively robust. These attractive properties together with highly increasing PHY speeds result in several initiatives of research projects and standardization bodies to extend Ethernet such as to use the technology in carrier environments. However these carrier Ethernet solutions are difficult to test with given simulation tools. This paper presents an emulation platform based on open-source software that allows to evaluate a carrier Ethernet variant called Ethernet label switching (ELS). The platform allows various topology setups and has the possibility to perform time and performance benchmarking and traffic generation using standard Linux software. We will present the architecture of the emulation framework and show promising results in base setups.