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Smart hybrid SDN approach for MPLS VPN management on digital environment

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Abstract

MPLS VPN is growing in front of the other network layer tunneling technologies of the OSI model. The trend related to this technology is justified mainly by the security, the quality of service that it can offer, and especially the routing speed. The main limitation of MPLS VPN is in the deployment complexity; this technology relies on several protocols to establish a tunnel, such as OSPF, BGP, MP-BGP, RSVP, and LDP. Software Defined Network avoids these complexities through the controller entity that supports the establishment of an MPLS VPN tunnel automatically, provided that the equipment to orchestrate is new generation supporting the SDN protocols. However, for budgetary and functional constraints, companies can not completely and immediately change their transport networks by equipment supporting SDN. Hybrid SDN networks address these constraints, providing the ability to orchestrate even equipment that does not support SDN, called a legacy. We propose in this paper a new hybrid intelligent SDN approach for MPLS VPN management in the digital environment. This approach is tested on a network consisting of routers of different manufacturers (Cisco, HP, and Juniper). The proposed approach is accompanied by a WEB graphic tool offering the administrator the possibility to choose the MPLS VPN architecture to deploy (Central Service, Hub-Spoke, and Intranet/Extranet) or customize its own architecture according to the customer’s request. In order to evaluate our model, we subjected it to a scalability test and an evaluation of the quality of experience to measure the satisfaction of the users who tried it.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude for the reviewers and editors for the valuable comments, which is helpful in improving the paper quality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lab. LTI, FS Ben M’Sik, University Hassan II of Casablanca, Casablanca, Morocco

    Ayoub Bahnasse, Mohamed Talea & Fatima Ezzahraa Louhab

  2. Lab. EEA & TI, FST Mohamedia, University Hassan II of Casablanca, Casablanca, Morocco

    Abdelmajid Badri

  3. Lab. EST, FST Marrakech, University Cadi Ayyad, ‎Marrakesh, Morocco

    Sara Laafar

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  1. Ayoub Bahnasse
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Bahnasse, A., Talea, M., Badri, A. et al. Smart hybrid SDN approach for MPLS VPN management on digital environment. Telecommun Syst 73, 155–169 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-019-00603-6

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