Page History

...

Multi Domain Service Coordinator (Super Controller)

The MDSC (Multi Domain Service Coordinator) sits between the CNC
(the one issuing connectivity requests) and the PNCs (Physical
Network Controllersr - the ones managing the physical network
resources). The MDSC can be collocated with the PNC, especially in
those cases where the service provider and the network provi
der arethesameentity.

The MDSC istheonlybuildingblock of thearchitecturethatisa
ble to implement all the four ACTN main functionalities, i.e. multi
domain coordination function, virtualization/abstraction function,
customer mapping function and virtual service coordination. The key
point of the MDSC and the whole ACTN framework is detaching the
network and service control from underlying technology and help
customer express the network as desired by business needs. The MDSC
envelopes the instantiation of right technology and network control
to meet business criteria. In essence it controls and manages the
primitives to achieve functionalities as desired by CNC
A hierarchy of MDSCs can be foreseen for scalability and
administrative choices. In order to allow for a hierarchy of MDSC,
the interface between the parent MDSC and a child MDSC must be th
e same as the interface between the MDSC and the PNC. This does not
introduce any complexity as it is transparent from the perspec
tive of the CNCs and the PNCs and it makes use of the same interfac
e model and its primitives as the CMI and MPI.

A key requirement for allowing recursion of MDSCs is that a single
interface needs to be defined both for the north and the south
bounds. In order to allow for multi-domain coordination a
1:N relationship must be allowed between MDSCs and between MDSCs and PNCs
(i.e. 1 parent MDSC and N child MDSC or 1 MDSC and
N PNCs). In addition to that it could be possible to have also a M:1 relationship
between MDSC and PNC to allow for network resource partitioning/
sharing among different customers not necessarily connected to the
same MDSC (e.g.differentserviceproviders).

Physical Network Controller (Domain Controller)

The PhysicalNetworkController is the one in charge of configuring
the network elements, monitoring the physical topology of the
networkandpassing it, either raworabstracted, to the MDSC.

...