Multimedia congestion control: circuit breakers for unicast RTP sessions

The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is widely used in telephony, video conferencing, and telepresence applications. Such applications are often run on best-effort UDP/IP networks. If congestion control is not implemented in these applications, then network congestion can lead to uncontrolled packet loss and a resulting deterioration of the user's multimedia experience. The congestion control algorithm acts as a safety measure by stopping RTP flows from using excessive resources and protecting the network from overload. At the time of this writing, however, while there are several proprietary solutions, there is no standard algorithm for congestion control of interactive RTP flows. This document does not propose a congestion control algorithm. It instead defines a minimal set of RTP circuit breakers: conditions under which an RTP sender needs to stop transmitting media data to protect the network from excessive congestion. It is expected that, in the absence of long-lived excessive congestion, RTP applications running on best-effort IP networks will be able to operate without triggering these circuit breakers. To avoid triggering the RTP circuit breaker, any Standards Track congestion control algorithms defined for RTP will need to operate within the envelope set by these RTP circuit breaker algorithms

Implementation and Evaluation of Activity-Based Congestion Management Using P4 (P4-ABC)

Activity-Based Congestion management (ABC) is a novel domain-based QoS mechanism providing more fairness among customers on bottleneck links. It avoids per-flow or per-customer states in the core network and is suitable for application in future 5G networks. However, ABC cannot be configured on standard devices. P4 is a novel programmable data plane specification which allows defining new headers and forwarding behavior. In this work, we implement an ABC prototype using P4 and point out challenges experienced during implementation. Experimental validation of ABC using the P4-based prototype reveals the desired fairness results

A path layer for the internet : enabling network operations on encrypted protocols

The deployment of encrypted transport protocols imposes new challenges for network operations. Key in-network functions such as those implemented by firewalls and passive measurement devices currently rely on information exposed by the transport layer. Encryption, in addition to improving privacy, helps to address ossification of network protocols caused by middleboxes that assume certain information to be present in the clear. However, “encrypting it all” risks diminishing the utility of these middleboxes for the traffic management tasks for which they were designed. A middlebox cannot use what it cannot see. We propose an architectural solution to this issue, by introducing a new “path layer” for transport-independent, in-band signaling between Internet endpoints and network elements on the paths between them, and using this layer to reinforce the boundary between the hop-by-hop network layer and the end-to- end transport layer. We define a path layer header on top of UDP to provide a common wire image for new, encrypted transports. This path layer header provides information to a transport- independent on-path state machine that replaces stateful handling currently based on exposed header flags and fields in TCP; it enables explicit measurability of transport layer performance; and offers extensibility by sender-to-path and path-to-receiver communications for diagnostics and management. This provides not only a replacement for signals that are not available with encrypted traffic, but also allows integrity-protected, enhanced signaling under endpoint control. We present an implementation of this wire image integrated with the QUIC protocol, as well as a basic stateful middlebox built on Vector Packet Processing (VPP) provided by FD.io

Nouveaux paradigmes de contrôle de congestion dans un réseau d'opérateur

La congestion dans les réseaux est un phénomène qui peut influer sur la qualité de service ressentie par les utilisateurs. L’augmentation continue du trafic sur l’internet rend le phénomène de congestion un problème auquel l’opérateur doit répondre pour satisfaire ses clients. Les solutions historiques à la congestion pour un opérateur, comme le surdimensionnement des liens de son infrastructure, ne sont plus aujourd’hui viables. Avec l’évolution de l’architecture des réseaux et l’arrivée de nouvelles applications sur l’internet, de nouveaux paradigmes de contrôle de congestion sont à envisager pour répondre aux attentes des utilisateurs du réseau de l’opérateur. Dans cette thèse, nous examinons les nouvelles approches proposées pour le contrôle de congestion dans le réseau d’un opérateur. Nous proposons une évaluation de ces approches à travers des simulations, ce qui nous permet d’estimer leur efficacité et leur potentiel à être déployés et opérationnels dans le contexte d’internet, ainsi que de se rendre compte des défis qu’il faut relever pour atteindre cet objectif. Nous proposons également des solutions de contrôle de congestion dans des environnements nouveaux tels que les architectures Software Defined Networking et le cloud déployé sur un ou plusieurs data centers, où la congestion est à surveiller pour maintenir la qualité des services cloud offerts aux clients. Pour appuyer nos propositions d’architectures de contrôle de congestion, nous présentons des plateformes expérimentales qui démontrent le fonctionnement et le potentiel de nos solutions

Review and analysis of networking challenges in cloud computing

Cloud Computing offers virtualized computing, storage, and networking resources, over the Internet, to organizations and individual users in a completely dynamic way. These cloud resources are cheaper, easier to manage, and more elastic than sets of local, physical, ones. This encourages customers to outsource their applications and services to the cloud. The migration of both data and applications outside the administrative domain of customers into a shared environment imposes transversal, functional problems across distinct platforms and technologies. This article provides a contemporary discussion of the most relevant functional problems associated with the current evolution of Cloud Computing, mainly from the network perspective. The paper also gives a concise description of Cloud Computing concepts and technologies. It starts with a brief history about cloud computing, tracing its roots. Then, architectural models of cloud services are described, and the most relevant products for Cloud Computing are briefly discussed along with a comprehensive literature review. The paper highlights and analyzes the most pertinent and practical network issues of relevance to the provision of high-assurance cloud services through the Internet, including security. Finally, trends and future research directions are also presented