QoS signaling across heterogeneous wired/wireless networks: resource management in diffserv using the NSIS protocol suite

Reservation-based Quality of Service (QoS) in a mixed wireless and wireline environment requires an end-to-end signaling protocol that is capable of adapting to the idiosyncrasies of the different networks. The QoS NSIS Signaling Protocol (QoSNSLP) has been created by the Next Steps In Signaling working group at the IETF to fulfill this need for an adaptive reservation protocol. It allows reservation requests to be interpreted by equipment implementing different QoS models along the path between a data sender and a data receiver. This paper describes the QoS-NSLP, and an example of a particular QoS model that is based on Resource Management in Diffserv (RMD). RMD provides a scalable dynamic resource management method for Diffserv networks. RMD has two basic functions to control the traffic load in a Diffserv domain: it provides admission control for flows entering the network and it has an algorithm that terminates the required amount of flows in case of congestion caused by failures (e.g. link or router) bandwidth and require per-flow reservations. On the other hand, the wireline networks tend to form the backbones and have relatively abundant bandwidth and carry a large number of flows, where aggregation is necessary since per-flow reservations suffer from scalability constraints

QoS-aware Mobility Management in IP-based Communication Networks

Der allgegenwärtige Zugang zu Informationen, jederzeit und überall, ist ein wichtiges Merkmal künftiger All-IP-Mobilfunktnetze, die verschiedene Systeme miteinander verbinden, dabei dynamischer und flexibler sein werden. Der Einsatz dieser Netze erfordert es jedoch, viele Herausforderungen zu überwinden. Eine der wichtigsten im Rahmen dieser Arbeit, ist die Frage, wie Quality of Service (QoS) Eigenschaften in solchen hoch dynamischen, mobilen Umgebungen zu garantieren sind. Bekanntermaßen beeinflusst die Mobilität von Mobilknoten (MN) die Dienstgüte in mobilen Netzen, da QoS-Parameters für die Ende-zu-Ende-Kommunikation vereinbart werden. Daher müssen Lösungen entwickelt werden, die nahtlose Mobilität, bei gleichzeitigen QoS-Garantien nach Handoffs, unterstützen. Diese Herausforderung ist das Hauptziel der vorliegenden Dissertation, die einen umfassenden Überblick über die bestehenden Mobilitäts- und QoS-Managment-Lösungen in IP-basierten Netzen liefert, gefolgt von einem Einblick in Methoden zur Kopplung von Mobilitätsmanagement und QoS-Lösungen. Nach Betrachtung der Vor- und Nachteile bestehender Ansätze, kommt die Dissertation zu dem Schluss, dass hybride Strategien vielversprechend sind und zu praktikablen Lösungen weiterentwickelt werden können, die sowohl Mobilitäts- als auch QoS-Anforderungen auf effiziente Weise,in allen zukünftigen IP-Mobilfunknetzen erfüllen können. Auf dieser Grundlage schlägt die Dissertation ein neues Hybrid-Protokoll, genannt "QoS-aware Mobile IP Fast Authentication Protocol" (QoMIFA), vor. Unser Vorschlag integriert MIFA als Mobilitäts-Management-Protokoll mit RSVP als QoS Reservierungsprotokoll. MI-FA wird aufgrund seiner Fähigkeit zu schnellen, sicheren und robusten Handoffs gewählt. RSVP hingegen dient als Standardlösung zur Bereitstellung von QoS in bestehenden IP-basierten Netzen. Unter Einhaltung der Hybrid-Architektur wird RSVP um ein neues Objekt, genannt "Mobility Object" erweitert, welches MIFA-Kontrollnachrichten kapselt. Nach der Spezifikation des neuen Vorschlags, bewertet die Dissertation auch seine Leistung im Vergleich zu dem bekannten "Simple QoS Signaling Protocol" (Simple QoS), mittels Simulationsstudien, modelliert mit dem "Network Simluator 2" (NS2). In der Auswertung werden der Einflusses der Netzwerklast und der Geschwindigkeit des Mobilknotens untersucht. Die hierzu verwendeten Leistungsparameter umfassen die Ressourcen-Reservierungs-Latenz, die Anzahl verlorener Pakete pro Handoff, die Anzahl der, vor Abschluss der Reservierung, mit Best-Effort-Eigenschaften übertragenen Pakete pro Handoff und die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Verbindungsabbrüchen. Unsere mittels Simulation erzielten Ergebnisse zeigen, dass QoMIFA schnelle und nahtlose Handoffs mit schneller Ressourcenreservierung nach Handoffs kombinieren kann. Unter Berücksichtigung des Einflusses der Netzwerklast, ist nachweisbar, dass QoMIFA eine besser Leistung als Simple QoS in allen untersuchten Szenarien mit geringer, mittlerer und hoher Last erreicht. Bei Betrachtung des Einflusses der Bewegungsgeschwindigkeit des Mobilknotens auf die Leistung, lassen sich unter beiden Protokollen Ping-Pong-Effekte beobachten, welche zu höheren Ressourcen-Reservierungs-Latenzen, mehr verlorenen Paketen und mehr Best-Effort-Paketen pro Handoff bei geringeren Geschwindigkeiten führen. Der stärkste Einfluss dieser Pinp-Pong-Effekte ist jeweils bei 3 km/h zu beobachten. Allerdings verhält sich QoMIFA unter allen untersuchten Bewegungsgeschwindigkeiten besser als Simple QoS und kann Mobilknoten auch bei hohen Geschwindigkeiten bedienen. In Anschluss an die simulationsgestützte Evaluierung, schätzt die Dissertation die Signalisierungskosten beider Protokolle unter Betrachtung der Kosten für Ortslokalise-rung und Paketzustellung. Im Ergebnis erreicht QoMIFA die zuvor genannten Leistungsverbesserungen auf Kosten von größeren Ortslokalisierungskosten und leicht höherer Paketzustellungskosten.Ubiquitous access to information anywhere, anytime and anyhow is an important feature of future all-IP mobile communication networks, which will interconnect various systems and be more dynamic and flexible. The deployment of these networks, however, requires overcoming many challenges. One of the main challenges of interest for this work is how to provide Qual-ity of Service (QoS) guarantees in such highly dynamic mobile environments.As known, mobility of Mobile Nodes (MNs) affects the QoS in mobile networks since QoS parameters are made for end-to-end communications. Therefore, it is a challenge to develop new solutions capable of supporting seamless mobility while simultaneously providing QoS guarantees after handoffs. Addressing this challenge is the main objective of this dissertation, which provides a comprehensive overview of mobility management solutions and QoS mech-anisms in IP-based networks followed by an insight into how mobility management and QoS solutions can be coupled with each other. Following the highlight of the state of art along with the pros and cons of existing approaches, the dissertation concludes that hybrid strategies are promising and can be further developed to achieve solutions that are capable of simultaneous-ly supporting mobility and QoS, simple from the implementation point of view, efficient and applicable to future all-IP mobile communication networks.Based on this, the dissertation proposes a new hybrid proposal named QoS-aware Mobile IP Fast Authentication Protocol (QoMIFA). Our proposal integrates MIFA as a mobility man-agement protocol with RSVP as a QoS reservation protocol. MIFA is selected due to its capa-bility of the provision of fast, secure and robust handoffs, while RSVP is chosen because it presents the standard solution used to support QoS in existing IP-based networks. The hybrid architecture is retained by introducing a new object, called “mobility object”, to RSVP in or-der to encapsulate MIFA control messages.Following the specification of the new proposal, the dissertation also evaluates its perfor-mance compared to the well-known Simple QoS signaling protocol (Simple QoS) by means of simulation studies modeled using the Network Simulator 2 (NS2). The evaluation compris-es the investigation of the impact of network load and MN speed. The performance measures we are interested in studying comprise the resource reservation latency, number of dropped packets per handoff, number of packets sent as best-effort per handoff until the reservation is accomplished and probability of dropping sessions. Our simulation results show that QoMIFA is capable of achieving fast and smooth handoffs in addition to its capability of quickly re-serving resources after handoffs. Considering the impact of network load, QoMIFA outper-forms Simple QoS in all studied scenarios (low- , middle- and high-loaded scenarios). With respect to the impact of MN speed, it can be observed that the impact of ping-pong effects is seen with both protocols and results in higher resource reservation latency, more dropped packets per handoff and more best-effort packets per handoff at low speeds than at higher ones. The worst impact of ping-pong effects is seen at a speed of 3 km/h when employing QoMIFA and Simple QoS, respectively. However, QoMIFA remains performing significantly better than Simple QoS under all studied MN speeds and can even properly serve MNs mov-ing at high speeds.Following the simulative evaluation, the dissertation estimates the signaling cost of both stud-ied protocols with respect to the location update and packet delivery cost. Our results show that QoMIFA achieves the above mentioned performance improvements at the cost of greater location update cost and slightly higher packet delivery cost than Simple QoS

Autonomous QoS Management and Policing in Unmanaged Local Area Networks

The high increase of bandwidth-intensive applications like high definition video streaming in home and small office environments leads to QoS challenges in hybrid wired/wireless local area networks. These networks are often not QoS aware and may contain bottlenecks in their topology. In addition, they often have a hybrid nature due to the used access technology consisting of, for example, Ethernet, wireless, and PowerLAN links. In this paper, we present the research work on a novel autonomous system for hybrid QoS in local area networks, called QoSiLAN, which does not rely on network infrastructure support but on host cooperation and works independently of the access technology. We present a new QoS Signalling Protocol, policing and admission control algorithms, and a new lightweight statistical bandwidth prediction algorithm for autonomous resource management in LANs. This new QoS framework enables link based, access-medium independent bandwidth management without network support. We provide evaluation results for the novel bandwidth prediction algorithm as well as for the QoSiLAN framework and its protocol, which highlight the features, robustness, and the effectiveness of the proposed system

A QoS-aware architecture for mobile internet

Tese de doutoramento InformáticaHoje em dia, as pessoas pretendem ter simultaneamente mobilidade, qualidade de serviço e estar sempre connectados à Internet. No intuito, de satisfazer estes clientes muito exigentes, os mercados das telecomunicações estão a impor novos e dificeis desafios às redes móveis, através da demanda, de heterogeneidade em termos de tecnologias de acesso rádio, novos serviços, niveis de qualidade de serviço adequados aos requisitos das aplicações de tempo real, elevada taxa de utilização do recursos disponiveis e melhor capacidade de desempenho. A Internet foi concebida para fornecer serviços sem qualquer tipo de garantias de qualidade às aplicações, apenas se comprometendo em oferecer o melhor serviço possível. No entanto, nos útlimos anos diversos esforços foram levados a cabo no sentido de dotar a Internet com o suporte à qualidade de serviço. Dos esforços desenvolvidos resultaram dois paradigmas para o suporte da qualidade de serviço: o modelo de Serviços Integrados (Integrated Services - IntServ) e o modelo de Serviços Diferenciados (Differentiated Services - DiffServ). Todavia, estes modelos de qualidade de serviço (QoS) foram concebido antes da existência da Internet móvel, portanto o desenvolvimento destes modelos não teve em consideração a questão da mobilidade. Por outro lado, o protocolo padrão actual para a Internet móvel, o MIPv6, revela algumas limitações nos cenários onde os utilizadores estão constantemente a moverem-se para outros pontos de acesso. Neste tipo de cenários, o MIPv6 introduz tempos de latência que não são sustentáveis para aplicações com requisitos de QoS mais restritos. Os factos revelados, demonstram que existe uma emergente necessidade de adaptar o actual protocolo de mobilidade, e também de adaptar os modelos de QoS, ou então criar modelos alternativos de QoS, para satisfazer às exigências do utilizador de hoje de redes móveis. Para alcançar este objectivo o presente trabalho propõe melhorias no sistema de gestão da mobilidade do protocolo MIPv6 e na gestão de recursos do modelo DiffServ. O MIPv6 foi melhorado para os cenários de micro-mobilidade com a abordagem para micro-mobilidade do F-HMIPv6. Enquanto que, o modelo DiffServ foi melhorado para os ambientes móveis com funcionalidades dinâmicas e adaptativas através da utilização de sinalização de QoS e da gestão distribuida dos recursos. A gestão da mobilidade e dos recursos foi também acoplada na solução proposta com o propósito de optimizar a utilização dos recursos num meio onde os recursos são tipicamente escassos. O modelo proposto é simples, é de fácil implementação, tem em consideração os requisitos da Internet móvel, e provou ser eficiente e capaz de fornecer serviços com QoS de elevada fiabilidade às aplicações.Over the last few years, several network communication challenges have arisen as a result of the growing number of users demanding Quality of Service (QoS) and mobility simultaneously. In order to satisfy these very demanding customers, the markets are imposing new challenges to wireless networks by demanding heterogeneity in terms of wireless access technologies, new services, suited QoS levels to real-time applications, high usability and improved performance. However, the Internet has been designed for providing application services without quality guarantees. That explains why, in the last years several efforts have been made to endow Internet with QoS support. From the developed efforts have resulted two QoS paradigms: Integrated Services (IntServ) which offers the guaranteed service model and the Differentiated Services (DiffServ) which offers the predictive service model. Although these QoS models have been designed before the existence of mobile Internet, so they do not consider the mobility issue. For instance, the guaranteed service model requires that whenever a Mobile Node (MN) wants to move to a new location, the allocated resources in the old path must be released and a new resource reservation in a new path must be made, resulting in extra signaling overhead, heavy processing and state load. Therefore, if handovers are frequent, large mobility and QoS signaling messages will be created in the access networks. Consequently, significant scalability problems may arise with this type of service model. The predicted service model, on the other hand, requires an additional features such as dynamic and adaptive resource management in order to be efficient in a very dynamic network such as a mobile network. A QoS solution for mobile environments must provide the capacity to adapt its resource utilization to a changeable nature of wireless networks because they have a more dynamic behavior due to incoming or outgoing handovers. For this reason, a QoS signalization for dynamic resource provisioning is necessary in order to supply adequate QoS levels to mobile users. On the other hand, the current standard protocol for mobile Internet, Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6), reveals limitations in scenarios where users are constantly moving to another point of attachment. In these situations, MIPv6 introduces latency times that are not sustainable for applications with strict QoS requirements. All things considered, reveal the emerging need to adapt the current standard mobility protocol and QoS models to satisfy today’s mobile user’s requirements. To accomplish this goal, the present work proposes enhancements in terms of the MIPv6 protocol mobility management scheme as well as in DiffServ QoS model resource management. The former was enhanced for micro-mobility scenarios with a specific combination of FMIPv6 (Fast Mobile IPv6) and HMIPv6 (Hierarchical Mobile IPv6) protocols. Whereas, the latter was enhanced for mobile environments with dynamic and adaptive features by using QoS signalization as well as distributed resource management. The mobility and resource management has also been coupled in the proposed solution with the objective of optimizing the resource utilization in a environment where resources are typically scarce. In order to assess model performance as well as its parametrization, a simulation model has been designed and implemented in the Network Simulator version two (NS-2). The model´s performance evaluation has been conducted based on the respective data acquired from statistical analysis in order to validate and consolidate the conclusions. Simulation results indicate that the solution avoids network congestion and starvation of less priority DiffServ classes. Moreover, the results also indicate that bandwidth utilization for priority classes increases and the QoS offered to MN’s applications, in each DiffServ class, remains unchangeable with MN mobility. The proposed model is simple and easy to implement. It considers mobile Internet requirements and has proven to be effective and capable of providing services with highly reliable QoS to mobile applications.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Bolsa SFRH/BD/35245/200

A distributed admission control model for class-based networks using edge-toedge QoS and SLS monitoring

The advent of class-based networks has brought new needs for network traffic control in order to assure a certain QoS level. Despite the existing proposals, achieving a generic admission control (AC) strategy for traffic entering these networks is still an open issue. This paper provides new insights on how AC shall be accomplished proposing an encompassing AC model for multi-service class-based networks, which covers both intra-domain and end-to-end operation, without requiring changes in the network core and complex AC signaling. For each service type, AC is distributed and based on both on-line edge-to-edge monitoring of relevant QoS parameters and SLSs utilization. Service monitoring, performed at egress nodes, provides adequate metrics to ingress nodes which take implicit or explicit AC decisions based on service-dependent criteria. Although being oriented to flow AC, the model can easily be applied to SLS AC. SLS auditing and SLS traffic conditioning are tasks also covered

Distributed admission control for QoS and SLS management

This article proposes a distributed admission control (AC) model based on on-line monitoring to manage the quality of Internet services and Service Level Specifications (SLSs) in class-based networks. The AC strategy covers intra- and interdomain operation, without adding significant complexity to the network control plane and involving only edge nodes. While ingress nodes perform implicit or explicit AC resorting to service-oriented rules for SLS and QoS parameters control, egress nodes collect service metrics providing them as inputs for AC. The end-to-end operation is viewed as a cumulative and repetitive process of AC and available service computation.We discuss crucial key points of the model implementation and evaluate its two main components: themonitoring process and the AC criteria. The results show that, using proper AC rules and safety margins, service commitments can be efficiently satisfied, and the simplicity and flexibility of the model can be explored to manage successfully QoS requirements of multiple Internet services.(undefined

Linking session based services with transport plane resources in IP multimedia subsystems.

The massive success and proliferation of Internet technologies has forced network operators to recognise the benefits of an IP-based communications framework. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) has been proposed as a candidate technology to provide a non-disruptive strategy in the move to all-IP and to facilitate the true convergence of data and real-time multimedia services. Despite the obvious advantages of creating a controlled environment for deploying IP services, and hence increasing the value of the telco bundle, there are several challenges that face IMS deployment. The most critical is that posed by the widespread proliferation ofWeb 2.0 services. This environment is not seen as robust enough to be used by network operators for revenue generating services. However IMS operators will need to justify charging for services that are typically available free of charge in the Internet space. Reliability and guaranteed transport of multimedia services by the efficient management of resources will be critical to differentiate IMS services. This thesis investigates resource management within the IMS framework. The standardisation of NGN/IMS resource management frameworks has been fragmented, resulting in weak functional and interface specifications. To facilitate more coherent, focused research and address interoperability concerns that could hamper deployment, a Common Policy and Charging Control (PCC) architecture is presented that defines a set of generic terms and functional elements. A review of related literature and standardisation reveals severe shortcomings regarding vertical and horizontal coordination of resources in the IMS framework. The deployment of new services should not require QoS standardisation or network upgrade, though in the current architecture advanced multimedia services are not catered for. It has been found that end-to-end QoS mechanisms in the Common PCC framework are elementary. To address these challenges and assist network operators when formulating their iii NGN strategies, this thesis proposes an application driven policy control architecture that incorporates end-user and service requirements into the QoS negotiation procedure. This architecture facilitates full interaction between service control and resource control planes, and between application developers and the policies that govern resource control. Furthermore, a novel, session based end-to-end policy control architecture is proposed to support inter-domain coordination across IMS domains. This architecture uses SIP inherent routing information to discover the routes traversed by the signalling and the associated routes traversed by the media. This mechanism effectively allows applications to issue resource requests from their home domain and enable end-to-end QoS connectivity across all traversed transport segments. Standard interfaces are used and transport plane overhaul is not necessary for this functionality. The Common PCC, application driven and session based end-to-end architectures are implemented in a standards compliant and entirely open source practical testbed. This demonstrates proof of concept and provides a platform for performance evaluations. It has been found that while there is a cost in delay and traffic overhead when implementing the complete architecture, this cost falls within established criteria and will have an acceptable effect on end-user experience. The open nature of the practical testbed ensures that all evaluations are fully reproducible and provides a convenient point of departure for future work. While it is important to leave room for flexibility and vendor innovation, it is critical that the harmonisation of NGN/IMS resource management frameworks takes place and that the architectures proposed in this thesis be further developed and integrated into the single set of specifications. The alternative is general interoperability issues that could render end-to-end QoS provisioning for advanced multimedia services almost impossible

Software Defined Applications in Cellular and Optical Networks

abstract: Small wireless cells have the potential to overcome bottlenecks in wireless access through the sharing of spectrum resources. A novel access backhaul network architecture based on a Smart Gateway (Sm-GW) between the small cell base stations, e.g., LTE eNBs, and the conventional backhaul gateways, e.g., LTE Servicing/Packet Gateways (S/P-GWs) has been introduced to address the bottleneck. The Sm-GW flexibly schedules uplink transmissions for the eNBs. Based on software defined networking (SDN) a management mechanism that allows multiple operator to flexibly inter-operate via multiple Sm-GWs with a multitude of small cells has been proposed. This dissertation also comprehensively survey the studies that examine the SDN paradigm in optical networks. Along with the PHY functional split improvements, the performance of Distributed Converged Cable Access Platform (DCCAP) in the cable architectures especially for the Remote-PHY and Remote-MACPHY nodes has been evaluated. In the PHY functional split, in addition to the re-use of infrastructure with a common FFT module for multiple technologies, a novel cross functional split interaction to cache the repetitive QAM symbols across time at the remote node to reduce the transmission rate requirement of the fronthaul link has been proposed.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 201