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Enabling the transport of fronthaul traffic in next generation cellular networks (5G) following the Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) architecture requires re-designing the fronthaul network featuring high-capacity and ultra-low latency. With the aim of leveraging statistical multiplexing gains, infrastructure reuse and, ultimately, cost reduction, the research community are focusing on Ethernet-based packet-switch networks. To this end, we propose to use high queueing delay percentiles of G/G/1 queueing model as the key metric in fronthaul network dimensioning. Simulations reveal that that the Kingman's Exponential Law of Congestion provides accurate estimates on such delays for the particular case of aggregating a number of eCPRI fronthaul flows, namely functional splits IU and IID. We conclude that conventional 10G, 40G and 100G transponders can cope with multiple legacy 10-20 MHz radio channels with worstcase delay guarantees. Conversely, scaling to 40 and 100 MHz channels will require the introduction of 200G, 400G and even 1T high-speed transponders.

Providing resilient inter-domain connections in multi-domain optical GMPLS networks is a challenge. On the one hand, the integration of different GMPLS domains to run traffic engineering operations requires the development of a framework for inter-domain routing and control of connections, while keeping the internal structure and available resources of the domains undisclosed to the other operators. On the other hand, the definition of mechanisms to take advantage of such automatically switched inter-domain connectivity is still an open issue. This article focuses on the analysis of applicability of one of these mechanisms: p-cycle-based protection. The proposed solution is based on the decomposition of the multi-domain resilience problem into two sub-problems, namely, the higher level interdomain protection and the lower level intra-domain protection. Building a p-cycle at the higher level is accomplished by certain tasks at the lower level, including straddling link connection, capacity allocation and path selection. In this article, we present several methods to realize inter-domain p-cycle protection at both levels and we evaluate their performance in terms of availability and spent resources. A discussion on a proposal of implementation of signalling based on extensions of existing protocols such as RSVP-TE and the PCE architecture illustrates the practical viability of the approach.

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