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

The role of admission control in assuring multiple services quality

Considering that network overprovisioning by itself is not always an attainable and everlasting solution, Admission Control (AC) mechanisms are recommended to keep network load controlled and assure the required service quality levels. This article debates the role of AC in multiservice IP networks, providing an overview and discussion of current and representative AC approaches, highlighting their main characteristics, pros and cons regarding the management of network services quality. In this debate, particular emphasis is given to an enhanced monitoring-based AC proposal for assuring multiple service levels in multiclass networks.Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias da Computação do Departamento de Informática da Universidade do Minho (CCTC

Self-adaptive distributed management of QoS and SLSs in multiservice networks

Apresentação efectuada na International Conference on Integrated Management (IM 2005), Nice, France, May 2005.Distributed service-oriented traffic control mechanisms, operating with minimum impact on network performance, assume a crucial role as regards controlling services quality and network resources transparent and efficiently. In this way, we describe and specify a lightweight distributed admission control (AC) model which provides an uniform solution for managing QoS and SLSs in multiclass and multidomain environments. Taking advantage of the consensual need of on-line service monitoring and traffic control at the network edges, AC decisions are driven by feedback from systematic edge-to-edge measurements of relevant QoS parameters for each service type and SLS utilization. This allows self-adaptive service and resource management, while abstracting from network core complexity and heterogeneity. In this paper, introducing an expressive notation, we specify the high-level entities for multiservice provisioning in a domain and formalize service-dependent AC equations to assure both intra and interdomain model operation. A proof-of-concept of the AC criteria effectiveness in satisfying each service class commitments while achieving high network utilization is provided through simulation

A Survey on the Contributions of Software-Defined Networking to Traffic Engineering

Since the appearance of OpenFlow back in 2008, software-defined networking (SDN) has gained momentum. Although there are some discrepancies between the standards developing organizations working with SDN about what SDN is and how it is defined, they all outline traffic engineering (TE) as a key application. One of the most common objectives of TE is the congestion minimization, where techniques such as traffic splitting among multiple paths or advanced reservation systems are used. In such a scenario, this manuscript surveys the role of a comprehensive list of SDN protocols in TE solutions, in order to assess how these protocols can benefit TE. The SDN protocols have been categorized using the SDN architecture proposed by the open networking foundation, which differentiates among data-controller plane interfaces, application-controller plane interfaces, and management interfaces, in order to state how the interface type in which they operate influences TE. In addition, the impact of the SDN protocols on TE has been evaluated by comparing them with the path computation element (PCE)-based architecture. The PCE-based architecture has been selected to measure the impact of SDN on TE because it is the most novel TE architecture until the date, and because it already defines a set of metrics to measure the performance of TE solutions. We conclude that using the three types of interfaces simultaneously will result in more powerful and enhanced TE solutions, since they benefit TE in complementary ways.European Commission through the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (GN4) under Grant 691567 Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the Secure Deployment of Services Over SDN and NFV-based Networks Project S&NSEC under Grant TEC2013-47960-C4-3-

A service-oriented admission control strategy for class-based IP networks

The clear trend toward the integration of current and emerging applications and services in the Internet launches new demands on service deployment and management. Distributed service-oriented traffic control mechanisms, operating with minimum impact on network performance, assume a crucial role as regards controlling services quality and network resources transparently and efficiently. In this paper, we describe and specify a lightweight distributed admission control (AC) model based on per-class monitoring feedback for ensuring the quality of distinct service levels in multiclass and multidomain environments. The model design, covering explicit and implicit AC, exhibits relevant properties that allow managing quality of service (QoS) and service-level specifications (SLSs) in multiservice IP networks in a flexible and scalable manner. These properties, stemming from the way service-dependent AC and on-line service performance monitoring are proposed and articulated in the model’s architecture and operation, allow a self-adaptive service and resource management, while abstracting from network core complexity and heterogeneity. A proof of concept is provided to illustrate the AC criteria ability in satisfying multiple service class commitments efficiently. The obtained results show that the self-adaptive behavior inherent to on-line measurement-based service management, combined with the established AC rules, is effective in controlling each class QoS and SLS commitments consistently

Managing services quality through admission control and active monitoring

We propose a lightweight traffic admission control scheme based on on-line monitoring which ensures multimedia services quality both intra-domain and end-to-end. The AC strategy is distributed, service-oriented and allows to control QoS and SLS without adding complexity to the network core. For each service class, AC decisions are driven by rate-based SLS control rules and QoS parameters control rules, defined and parameterized according to each service characteristics. These rules are essentially based on systematic on-line measurements of relevant QoS and performance parameters. Thus, from a practical perspective, we discuss and evaluate methodologies and mechanisms for parameter estimation. The AC criteria is evaluated as regards its ability to ensure service commitments while achieving high network utilization. The results show that the proposed model provides a good compromise between simplicity, service level guarantee and network usage, even for services with strict QoS requirements

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