Control Plane - Summary

The facility to switch circuits is required when there are insufficient channels available in UKLight to provide a dedicated connection between all the desired pairs of hosts. Within ESLEA, switching will be undertaken by configuring the Cisco 7609 switch/routers to which exploitation sub-projects? end hosts are connected. ESLEA engineers will controlthese Cisco switches but will not control switches in the UKLight core. Therefore, use of an optical switch at an edge site to simulate switching in the core is being considered. Such a switch would be connected in a way that is topologically equivalent to being in the core though physically outside.

The switching can be achieved by the ESLEA engineers directly manipulating the Cisco switches when a circuit is required. However, ESLEA is developing the Control Plane Software (CPS) to allowresearch scientists working on the sub-projects to ?reserve? circuits in advance by specifying, for example, the time during which the circuit will be required, the end points and the throughput needed. The software would then establish whether such a reservation is possible by, for example, checkingfor clashes with other reservations. If the reservation is possible, then the software would acceptit and, at the specified time, a circuit corresponding to the reservation would be established.

The CPS will control the ESLEA Cisco 7609 switch/routers and any switch installed to simulate switching in the UKLight core. The CPS is not being developed in isolation and will build on relevant existing work and will collaborate with similar efforts elsewhere, where advantageous.