Multilevel bandwidth measurements and capacity exploitation in gigabit passive optical networks. Issue 18 (1st December 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rufini, Arianna; Mellia, Marco; Tego, Edion; Matera, Francesco
• Is Part Of: IET communications. Volume 8:Issue 18(2014)
• Page Start: 3357
• Page End: 3365
• Publication Date: 2014-12-01
• Subjects: passive optical networks -- bandwidth allocation -- transport protocols -- Internet -- contracts; multilevel bandwidth measurements -- capacity exploitation -- gigabit passive optical networks -- GPON -- Internet protocols -- transfer control protocol -- physical layer capacity -- service level agreements -- SLA verification -- multiple TCP connections -- bit rate 100 Mbit/s; Telecommunication systems -- Periodicals; Speech processing systems -- Periodicals; 621.38205
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-com.2014.0165
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-8628

Abstract

Abstract : The authors report an experimental investigation on the measurement of the available bandwidth for the users in gigabit passive optical networks (GPON) and the limitations caused by the Internet protocols, and transfer control protocol (TCP) in particular. We point out that the huge capacity offered by the GPON highlights the enormous differences that can be showed among the available and actually exploitable bandwidth. In fact, while the physical layer capacity can reach value of 100 Mb/s and more, the bandwidth at disposal of the user (i.e. either throughput at transport layer or goodput at application layer) can be much lower when applications and services based on TCP protocol are considered. In the context of service level agreements (SLA) verification, we show how to simultaneously measure throughput and line capacity by offering a method to verify multilayer SLA. We also show how it is possible to better exploit the physical layer capacity by adopting multiple TCP connections avoiding the bottleneck of a single connection.