Design, implementation and evaluation of a QoS-aware transport protocol

In the context of a reconfigurable transport protocol framework, we propose a QoS-aware Transport Protocol (QSTP), specifically designed to operate over QoS-enabled networks with bandwidth guarantee. QSTP combines QoS-aware TFRC congestion control mechanism, which takes into account the network-level bandwidth reservations, with a Selective ACKnowledgment (SACK) mechanism in order to provide a QoS-aware transport service that fill the gap between QoS enabled network services and QoS constraint applications. We have developed a prototype of this protocol in the user-space and conducted a large range of measurements to evaluate this proposal under various network conditions. Our results show that QSTP allows applications to reach their negotiated QoS over bandwidth guaranteed networks, such as DiffServ/AF network, where TCP fails. This protocol appears to be the first reliable protocol especially designed for QoS network architectures with bandwidth guarantee

Implementation and performance analysis of a QoS-aware TFRC mechanism

This paper deals with the improvement of transport protocol behaviour over the DiffServ Assured Forwarding (AF)class. The Assured Service (AS) provides a minimum throughput guarantee that classical congestion control mechanisms, like window-based in TCP or equation-based in TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC), are not able to use efficiently. In response, this paper proposes a performance analysis of a QoS aware congestion control mechanism, named gTFRC, which improves the delivery of continuous streams. The gTFRC (guaranteed TFRC) mechanism has been integrated into an Enhanced Transport Protocol (ETP) that allows protocol mechanisms to be dynamically managed and controlled. After comparing a ns-2 simulation and our implementation of the basic TFRC mechanism, we show that ETP/gTFRC extension is able to reach a minimum throughput guarantee whatever the flow’s RTT and target rate (TR) and the network provisioning conditions

Performance enhancement of large scale networks with heterogeneous traffic.

Finally, these findings are applied towards improving the performance of the Differentiated Services architecture by developing a new Refined Assured Forwarding framework where heterogeneous traffic flows share the same aggregate class. The new framework requires minimal modification to the existing Diffserv routers. The efficiency of the new architecture in enhancing the performance of Diffserv is demonstrated by simulation results under different traffic scenarios.This dissertation builds on the notion that segregating traffic with disparate characteristics into separate channels generally results in a better performance. Through a quantitative analysis, it precisely defines the number of classes and the allocation of traffic into these classes that will lead to optimal performance from a latency standpoint. Additionally, it weakens the most generally used assumption of exponential or geometric distribution of traffic service time in the integration versus segregation studies to date by including self-similarity in network traffic.The dissertation also develops a pricing model based on resource usage in a system with segregated channels. Based on analytical results, this dissertation proposes a scheme whereby a service provider can develop compensatory and fair prices for customers with varying QoS requirements under a wide variety of ambient traffic scenarios.This dissertation provides novel techniques for improving the Quality of Service by enhancing the performance of queue management in large scale packet switched networks with a high volume of traffic. Networks combine traffic from multiple sources which have disparate characteristics. Multiplexing such heterogeneous traffic usually results in adverse effects on the overall performance of the network

User-Centric Quality of Service Provisioning in IP Networks

The Internet has become the preferred transport medium for almost every type of communication, continuing to grow, both in terms of the number of users and delivered services. Efforts have been made to ensure that time sensitive applications receive sufficient resources and subsequently receive an acceptable Quality of Service (QoS). However, typical Internet users no longer use a single service at a given point in time, as they are instead engaged in a multimedia-rich experience, comprising of many different concurrent services. Given the scalability problems raised by the diversity of the users and traffic, in conjunction with their increasing expectations, the task of QoS provisioning can no longer be approached from the perspective of providing priority to specific traffic types over coexisting services; either through explicit resource reservation, or traffic classification using static policies, as is the case with the current approach to QoS provisioning, Differentiated Services (Diffserv). This current use of static resource allocation and traffic shaping methods reveals a distinct lack of synergy between current QoS practices and user activities, thus highlighting a need for a QoS solution reflecting the user services. The aim of this thesis is to investigate and propose a novel QoS architecture, which considers the activities of the user and manages resources from a user-centric perspective. The research begins with a comprehensive examination of existing QoS technologies and mechanisms, arguing that current QoS practises are too static in their configuration and typically give priority to specific individual services rather than considering the user experience. The analysis also reveals the potential threat that unresponsive application traffic presents to coexisting Internet services and QoS efforts, and introduces the requirement for a balance between application QoS and fairness. This thesis proposes a novel architecture, the Congestion Aware Packet Scheduler (CAPS), which manages and controls traffic at the point of service aggregation, in order to optimise the overall QoS of the user experience. The CAPS architecture, in contrast to traditional QoS alternatives, places no predetermined precedence on a specific traffic; instead, it adapts QoS policies to each individual’s Internet traffic profile and dynamically controls the ratio of user services to maintain an optimised QoS experience. The rationale behind this approach was to enable a QoS optimised experience to each Internet user and not just those using preferred services. Furthermore, unresponsive bandwidth intensive applications, such as Peer-to-Peer, are managed fairly while minimising their impact on coexisting services. The CAPS architecture has been validated through extensive simulations with the topologies used replicating the complexity and scale of real-network ISP infrastructures. The results show that for a number of different user-traffic profiles, the proposed approach achieves an improved aggregate QoS for each user when compared with Best effort Internet, Traditional Diffserv and Weighted-RED configurations. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the proposed architecture not only provides an optimised QoS to the user, irrespective of their traffic profile, but through the avoidance of static resource allocation, can adapt with the Internet user as their use of services change.France Teleco

Contributions based on cross-layer design for quality-of-service provisioning over DVB-S2/RCS broadband satellite system

Contributions based on cross-layer design for Quality-of-Service provisioning over DVB-S2/RCS Broadband Satellite Systems Nowadays, geostationary (GEO) satellite infrastructure plays a crucial role for the provisioning of IP services. Such infrastructure can provide ubiquity and broadband access, being feasible to reach disperse populations located worldwide within remote areas where terrestrial infrastructure can not be deployed. Nevertheless, due to the expansion of the World Wide Web (WWW), new IP applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP) and multimedia services requires considering different levels of individual packet treatment through the satellite network. This differentiation must include not only the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters to specify packet transmission priorities across the network nodes, but also the required amount of bandwidth assignment to guarantee its transport. In this context, the provisioning of QoS guarantees over GEO satellite systems becomes one of the main research areas of organizations such as the European Space Agency (ESA). Mainly because, their current infrastructures require continuous exploitation, as launching a new communication satellite is associated with excessive costs. Therefore, the support of IP services with QoS guarantees must be developed on the terrestrial segment to enable using the current assets. In this PhD thesis several contributions to improve the QoS provisioning over DVB-S2/RCS Broadband Satellite Systems have been developed. The contributions are based on cross-layer design, following the layered model standardized in the ETSI TR 102 157 and 462. The proposals take into account the drawbacks posed by GEO satellite systems such as delay, losses and bandwidth variations. The first contribution proposes QoSatArt, an architecture defined to improve QoS provisioning among services classes considering the physical layer variations due to the presence of rain events. The design is developed inside the gateway, including the specification of the main functional blocks to provide QoS guarantees and mechanisms to minimize de delay and jitter values experienced at the application layer. Here, a cross-layer design between the physical and the network layer has been proposed, to enforce the QoS specifications based on the available bandwidth. The proposed QoSatArt architecture is evaluated using the NS-2 simulation tool. In addition, the performance analysis of several standard Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) variants is also performed. This is carry out to find the most suitable TCP variant that enhances TCP transmission over a QoS architecture such as the QoSatArt. The second contribution proposes XPLIT, an architecture developed to enhance TCP transmission with QoS for DVB-S2/RCS satellite systems. Complementary to QoSatArt, XPLIT introduces Performance Enhanced Proxies (PEPs), which breaks the end-to-end semantic of TCP connections. However, it considers a cross-layer design between the network layer and the transport layer to enhance TCP transmission while providing them with QoS guarantees. Here, a modified TCP variant called XPLIT-TCP is proposed to send data through the forward and the return channel. XPLIT-TCP uses two control loops (the buffer occupancy and the service rate to provide optimized congestion control functions. The proposed XPLIT architecture is evaluated using the NS-2 simulation tool. Finally, the third contribution of this thesis consists on the development of a unified architecture to provide QoS guarantees based on cross-layer design over broadband satellite systems. It adopts the enhancements proposed by the QoSatArt architecture working at the network layer, in combination with the enhancements proposed by the XPLIT architecture working at the transport layer.Actualmente, los satélites Geoestacionarios (GEO) juegan un papel muy importante en la provisión de servicios IP. Esta infraestructura permite proveer ubicuidad y acceso de banda ancha, haciendo posible alcanzar poblaciones dispersas en zonas remotas donde la infraestructura terrestre es inexistente. Sin embargo, en la provisión de aplicaciones como Voz sobre IP (VoIP) y servicios multimedia, es importante considerar el tratamiento diferenciado de paquetes a través de la red satelital. Esta diferenciación debe considerar no solo los requerimientos de Calidad de Servicio (QoS) que especifican las prioridades de los paquetes a través de los nodos de red, si no también el ancho de banda asignado para garantizar su transporte. En este contexto, la provisión de garantías de QoS sobre satélites GEO es una de las Principales áreas de investigación de organizaciones como la Agencia Espacial Europea (ESA) persiguen. Esto se debe principalmente ya que dichas organizaciones requieren la explotación continua de sus activos, dado que lanzar un nuevo satélite al espacio representa costos excesivos. Como resultado, el soporte de servicios IP con calidad de servicio sobre la infraestructura satelital actual es de vital importancia. En esta tesis doctoral se presentan varias contribuciones para el soporte a la Calidad de Servicio en redes DVB-S2/RCS satelitales de banda ancha. Las contribuciones propuestas se basan principalmente en el diseño ”cross-layer” siguiendo el modelo de capas definido y estandarizado en las especificaciones ETSI TR 102 157 [ETS03] y 462 [10205]. Las contribuciones propuestas consideran las limitaciones presentes de los sistemas satelitales GEO como lo son el retardo de propagación, la perdida de paquetes y las variaciones de ancho de banda causados por eventos atmosféricos. La primera contribución propone QoSatArt, una arquitectura definida para mejorar el soporte a la QoS. Esta arquitectura considera las variaciones en la capa física debido a la presencia de eventos de lluvia para priorizar los niveles de QoS. El diseño se desarrolla en el gateway e incluye las especificaciones de los principales elementos funcionales y mecanismos para garantizar la QoS y minimizar el retardo presente en la capa de aplicación. Aquí, se propone un diseño ”cross-layer” entre la capa física y la capa de red, con el objetivo de reforzar las especificaciones de QoS considerando el ancho de banda disponible. La arquitectura QoSatArt es simulada y evaluada empleando la herramienta de simulación NS-2. Adicionalmente, un análisis de desempeño de diversas variantes de TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) es realizado con el objetivo de encontrar la variante de TCP más adecuada para trabajar en un ambiente con QoS como QoSatArt. La segunda contribución propone XPLIT, una arquitectura desarrollada para mejorar las transmisiones TCP con QoS en un sistema satelital DVB-S2/RCS. Complementario a QoSatArt, XPLIT emplea PEPs (Performance Enhanced Proxies), afectando la semántica end-to-end de las conexiones TCP. Sin embargo, XPLIT considera un diseño ”cross-layer” entre la capa de red y la capa de transporte con el objetivo de mejorar las transmisiones TCP considerando los parámetros de QoS como la ocupación de la cola y la tasa de transmisión (_i, _i). Aquí, se propone el uso de una nueva variante de TCP es propuesta llamada XPLIT-TCP, que usa dos bucles para proveer funciones mejoradas en el control de congestión. La arquitectura XPLIT es simulada y evaluada empleando la herramienta de simulación NS-2. Finalmente, la tercera contribución de esta tesis consiste en el desarrollo de un arquitectura unificada para el soporte a la QoS en redes satelitales de banda ancha basada en técnicas ”cross-layer”. Esta arquitectura adopta las mejoras propuestas por QoSatArt en la capa de red en combinación con las mejoras propuestas por XPLIT en la capa de transporte

Congestion Control for Streaming Media

The Internet has assumed the role of the underlying communication network for applications such as file transfer, electronic mail, Web browsing and multimedia streaming. Multimedia streaming, in particular, is growing with the growth in power and connectivity of today\u27s computers. These Internet applications have a variety of network service requirements and traffic characteristics, which presents new challenges to the single best-effort service of today\u27s Internet. TCP, the de facto Internet transport protocol, has been successful in satisfying the needs of traditional Internet applications, but fails to satisfy the increasingly popular delay sensitive multimedia applications. Streaming applications often use UDP without a proper congestion avoidance mechanisms, threatening the well-being of the Internet. This dissertation presents an IP router traffic management mechanism, referred to as Crimson, that can be seamlessly deployed in the current Internet to protect well-behaving traffic from misbehaving traffic and support Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of delay sensitive multimedia applications as well as traditional Internet applications. In addition, as a means to enhance Internet support for multimedia streaming, this dissertation report presents design and evaluation of a TCP-Friendly and streaming-friendly transport protocol called the Multimedia Transport Protocol (MTP). Through a simulation study this report shows the Crimson network efficiently handles network congestion and minimizes queuing delay while providing affordable fairness protection from misbehaving flows over a wide range of traffic conditions. In addition, our results show that MTP offers streaming performance comparable to that provided by UDP, while doing so under a TCP-Friendly rate

Toward a versatile transport protocol

Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse ont pour but d'améliorer la couche transport de l'architecture réseau de l'OSI. La couche transport est de nos jour dominée par l'utilisation de TCP et son contrôle de congestion. Récemment de nouveaux mécanismes de contrôle de congestion ont été proposés. Parmi eux TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) semble être le plus abouti. Cependant, tout comme TCP, ce mécanisme ne prend pas en compte ni les évolutions du réseau ni les nouveaux besoins des applications. La première contribution de cette thèse consiste en une spécialisation de TFRC afin d'obtenir un protocole de transport avisé de la Qualité de Service (QdS) spécialement défini pour des réseaux à QdS offrant une garantie de bande passante. Ce protocole combine un mécanisme de contrôle de congestion orienté QdS qui prend en compte la réservation de bande passante au niveau réseau, avec un service de fiabilité totale afin de proposer un service similaire à TCP. Le résultat de cette composition constitue le premier protocole de transport adapté à des réseau à garantie de bande passante. En même temps que cette expansion de service au niveau réseau, de nouvelles technologies ont été proposées et déployées au niveau physique. Ces nouvelles technologies sont caractérisées par leur affranchissement de support filaire et la mobilité des systèmes terminaux. De plus, elles sont généralement déployées sur des entités où la puissance de calcul et la disponibilité mémoire sont inférieures à celles des ordinateurs personnels. La deuxième contribution de cette thèse est la proposition d'une adaptation de TFRC à ces entités via la proposition d'une version allégée du récepteur. Cette version a été implémentée, évaluée quantitativement et ses nombreux avantages et contributions ont été démontrés par rapport à TFRC. Enfin, nous proposons une optimisation des implémentations actuelles de TFRC. Cette optimisation propose tout d'abord un nouvel algorithme pour l'initialisation du récepteur basé sur l'utilisation de l'algorithme de Newton. Nous proposons aussi l'introduction d'un outil nous permettant d'étudier plus en détails la manière dont est calculé le taux de perte du côté récepteur. ABSTRACT : This thesis presents three main contributions that aim to improve the transport layer of the current networking architecture. The transport layer is nowadays overruled by the use of TCP and its congestion control. Recently new congestion control mechanisms have been proposed. Among them, TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) appears to be one of the most complete. Nevertheless this congestion control mechanism, as TCP, does not take into account either the evolution of the network in terms of Quality of Service and mobility or the evolution of the applications. The first contribution of this thesis is a specialisation TFRC congestion control to propose a QoS-aware Transport Protocol specifically designed to operate over QoS-enabled networks with bandwidth guarantee mechanisms. This protocol combines a QoS-aware congestion control, which takes into account networklevel bandwidth reservations, with full reliability in order mechanism to provide a transport service similar to TCP. As a result, we obtain the guaranteed throughput at the application level where TCP fails. This protocol is the first transport protocol compliant with bandwidth guaranteed networks. At the same time the set of network services expands, new technologies have been proposed and deployed at the physical layer. These new technologies are mainly characterised by communications done without wire constraint and the mobility of the end-systems. Furthermore, these technologies are usually deployed on entities where the CPU power and memory storage are limited. The second contribution of this thesis is therefore to propose an adaptation of TFRC to these entities. This is accomplished with the proposition of a new sender-based version of TFRC. This version has been implemented, evaluated and its numerous contributions and advantages compare to usual TFRC version have been demonstrated. Finally, we proposed an optimisation of actual implementations of TFRC. This optimisation first consists in the proposition of an algorithm based on a numerical analysis of the equation used in TFRC and the use of the Newton's algorithm. We furthermore give a first step, with the introduction of a new framework for TFRC, in order to better understand TFRC behaviour and to optimise the computation of the packet loss rate according to loss probability distribution

A novel network architecture for train-to-wayside communication with quality of service over heterogeneous wireless networks

In the railway industry, there are nowadays different actors who would like to send or receive data from the wayside to an onboard device or vice versa. These actors are e.g., the Train Operation Company, the Train Constructing Company, a Content Provider, etc. This requires a communication module on each train and at the wayside. These modules interact with each other over heterogeneous wireless links. This system is referred to as the Train-to-Wayside Communication System (TWCS). While there are already a lot of deployments using a TWCS, the implementation of quality of service, performance enhancing proxies (PEP) and the network mobility functions have not yet been fully integrated in TWCS systems. Therefore, we propose a novel and modular IPv6-enabled TWCS architecture in this article. It jointly tackles these functions and considers their mutual dependencies and relationships. DiffServ is used to differentiate between service classes and priorities. Virtual local area networks are used to differentiate between different service level agreements. In the PEP, we propose to use a distributed TCP accelerator to optimize bandwidth usage. Concerning network mobility, we propose to use the SCTP protocol (with Dynamic Address Reconfiguration and PR-SCTP extensions) to create a tunnel per wireless link, in order to support the reliable transmission of data between the accelerators. We have analyzed different design choices, pinpointed the main implementation challenges and identified candidate solutions for the different modules in the TWCS system. As such, we present an elaborated framework that can be used for prototyping a fully featured TWCS