Quality of Service over Specific Link Layers: state of the art report

The Integrated Services concept is proposed as an enhancement to the current Internet architecture, to provide a better Quality of Service (QoS) than that provided by the traditional Best-Effort service. The features of the Integrated Services are explained in this report. To support Integrated Services, certain requirements are posed on the underlying link layer. These requirements are studied by the Integrated Services over Specific Link Layers (ISSLL) IETF working group. The status of this ongoing research is reported in this document. To be more specific, the solutions to provide Integrated Services over ATM, IEEE 802 LAN technologies and low-bitrate links are evaluated in detail. The ISSLL working group has not yet studied the requirements, that are posed on the underlying link layer, when this link layer is wireless. Therefore, this state of the art report is extended with an identification of the requirements that are posed on the underlying wireless link, to provide differentiated Quality of Service

Fairness for ABR multipoint-to-point connections

In multipoint-to-point connections, the traffic at the root (destination) is the combination of all traffic originating at the leaves. A crucial concern in the case of multiple senders is how to define fairness within a multicast group and among groups and point-to-point connections. Fairness definition can be complicated since the multipoint connection can have the same identifier (VPI/VCI) on each link, and senders might not be distinguishable in this case. Many rate allocation algorithms implicitly assume that there is only one sender in each VC, which does not hold for multipoint-to-point cases. We give various possibilities for defining fairness for multipoint connections, and show the tradeoffs involved. In addition, we show that ATM bandwidth allocation algorithms need to be adapted to give fair allocations for multipoint-to-point connections.Comment: Proceedings of SPIE 98, November 199

Dynamic Feedback Flow Control Algorithms for Unicast and Multicast Available Bit Rate Service in Asynchronous Transfer Mode Networks

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network technology has been adopted to integrate different kinds of traffic, like video, audio and data. It provides several service categories including constant bit rate (CBR), variable bit rate (VBR), available bit rate (ABR), and unspecified bit rate (UBR) service. In particular, the ABR service has been approved to use the bandwidth left by CBR and VBR services, which is ideal for data applications and can perform well for real-time applications with the appropriate implementation. Basically ABR servIce attempts to guarantee minimum cell rate, achieve fairness, and minimise cell loss by periodically indicating to sources the rate at which to send. Therefore, there is a critical need for an effective flow control mechanism to allocate network resources (buffers, bandwidth), and provide the negotiated quality of service. This thesis develops dynamic feedback flow control schemes in ATM networks, with primary focus on point-to-point (unicast) and point-tomUltipoint (multicast) ABR algorithms. Firstly, it surveys a number of point-to-point schemes proposed for supporting unicast ABR service. Some of these algorithms do not measure the actual ABR traffic load which leads to either overestimates or underestimates of the bandwidth allocation. Others do not monitor the activity of the sources and overlook the temporarily idle sources. The rest may be implemented with additional complexity. Secondly, the research shifts to the problems of point-to-multipoint algorithms by introducing the basic concept of multicasting ABR servIce and reviewing a group of consolidation schemes, where the compromise between low consolidation nOlse and fast transient response is the main issue. Thirdly, the design and implementation issues have been addressed together with the major drawbacks of the previous schemes and hence two algorithms have been proposed. A dynamic rate-based flow control (DRFC) scheme has been developed to support ABR service in unicast environment, while an adaptive feedback consolidation (AFC) algorithm has been designed for ABR multicasting. Finally, these schemes are extensively tested and compared with others from the literature using a wide range of network configurations and different types of traffic sources. The simulation results show that the DRFC algorithm allocates the available bandwidth fairly among the contending ABR sources, while achieving high link utilisation with reasonable growth of queues. The AFC scheme eliminates the consolidation noise with fast transient response as well as minimising the effect of non-responsive branches

Random Linear Network Coding for 5G Mobile Video Delivery

An exponential increase in mobile video delivery will continue with the demand for higher resolution, multi-view and large-scale multicast video services. Novel fifth generation (5G) 3GPP New Radio (NR) standard will bring a number of new opportunities for optimizing video delivery across both 5G core and radio access networks. One of the promising approaches for video quality adaptation, throughput enhancement and erasure protection is the use of packet-level random linear network coding (RLNC). In this review paper, we discuss the integration of RLNC into the 5G NR standard, building upon the ideas and opportunities identified in 4G LTE. We explicitly identify and discuss in detail novel 5G NR features that provide support for RLNC-based video delivery in 5G, thus pointing out to the promising avenues for future research.Comment: Invited paper for Special Issue "Network and Rateless Coding for Video Streaming" - MDPI Informatio

Feedback Consolidation Algorithms for ABR Point-to-Multipoint Connections in ATM Networks

ABR traffic management for point-to-multipoint connections controls the source rate to the minimum rate supported by all the branches of the multicast tree. A number of algorithms have been developed for extending ABR congestion avoidance algorithms to perform feedback consolidation at the branch points. This paper discusses various design options and implementation alternatives for the consolidation algorithms, and proposes a number of new algorithms. The performance of the proposed algorithms and the previous algorithms is compared under a variety of conditions. Results indicate that the algorithms we propose eliminate the consolidation noise (caused if the feedback is returned before all branches respond), while exhibiting a fast transient response.Comment: Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 1998, March 1998, volume 3, pp. 1004-101

Adaptive Multicast of Multi-Layered Video: Rate-Based and Credit-Based Approaches

Network architectures that can efficiently transport high quality, multicast video are rapidly becoming a basic requirement of emerging multimedia applications. The main problem complicating multicast video transport is variation in network bandwidth constraints. An attractive solution to this problem is to use an adaptive, multi-layered video encoding mechanism. In this paper, we consider two such mechanisms for the support of video multicast; one is a rate-based mechanism that relies on explicit rate congestion feedback from the network, and the other is a credit-based mechanism that relies on hop-by-hop congestion feedback. The responsiveness, bandwidth utilization, scalability and fairness of the two mechanisms are evaluated through simulations. Results suggest that while the two mechanisms exhibit performance trade-offs, both are capable of providing a high quality video service in the presence of varying bandwidth constraints.Comment: 11 page