The goal of this presentation is to explain how a major tier 1 IP backbone is designed and managed in a "pure" IP philosophy, where robustness and simplicity are the basic design principles. The first part of the talk will address Sprint IP backbone design principles. We will describe the topology of the network, the structure of the POPs, and the various technologies employed to design and manage the network. We will try to justify any of the choices, as well as explain why we do not use some very popular technologies such as ATM, MPLS, etc. The second part of the talk will be dedicated to some traffic observations. The Sprint IP backbone has been monitored for 2 years now. We will discuss some of the traffic metrics we have been measuring and their impact on the technology or on the services that can be provided. To the light of traffic observations, and given the current architecture of our backbone, we will present in the third and last part the problems that are yet to solve and discuss potential solutions and expected evolution. Note that this talk will contain equations, without variable though :-) bio courte: Christophe Diot works with the Sprint Advanced Technology Laboratory where he is in charge of the IP research group (www.sprintlabs.com). Sprint ATL's charter is to analyze new mechanisms and protocols for deployment on an IP backbone. Current activities include diffserv, RED, and PIM-SSM deployment. The IP group major project is the passive monitoring of the Sprint IP backbone in order to study IP traffic characteristics.

YODA Home       YODA Update       EPFL Home Page