Quality of service assurance for the next generation Internet

The provisioning for multimedia applications has been of increasing interest among researchers and Internet Service Providers. Through the migration from resource-based to service-driven networks, it has become evident that the Internet model should be enhanced to provide support for a variety of differentiated services that match applications and customer requirements, and not stay limited under the flat best-effort service that is currently provided. In this paper, we describe and critically appraise the major achievements of the efforts to introduce Quality of Service (QoS) assurance and provisioning within the Internet model. We then propose a research path for the creation of a network services management architecture, through which we can move towards a QoS-enabled network environment, offering support for a variety of different services, based on traffic characteristics and user expectations

RMD (Resource Management in Diffserv) QoS-NSLP model

This draft describes a local QoS model, denoted as Resource Management in Diffserv (RMD) QoS model, for NSIS that extends the IETF Differentiated Services (Diffserv) architecture with a scalable admission control and resource reservation concept. The specification of this QoS model includes a description of its QoS parameter information, as well as how that information should be treated or interpreted in the network

A QoS-enabled resource management scheme for F-HMIPv6 micro mobility approach

In the near future, wireless networks will certainly run real-time applications with special Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. In this context micro mobility management schemes such as Fast Handovers over Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (F-HMIPv6) will be a useful tool in reducing Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) handover disruption and thereby to improve delay and losses. However, F-HMIPv6 alone does not support QoS requirements for real-time applications. Therefore, in order to accomplish this goal, a novel resource management scheme for the Differentiated Services (DiffServ) QoS model is proposed to be used as an add-on to F-HMIPv6. The new resource management scheme combines the F-HMIPv6 functionalities with the DiffServ QoS model and with network congestion control and dynamic reallocation mechanisms in order to accommodate different QoS traffic requirements. This new scheme based on a Measurement-Based Admission Control (MBAC) algorithm is effective, simple, scalable and avoids the well known traditional resource reservation issues such as state maintenance, signaling overhead and processing load. By means of the admission evaluation of new flows and handover flows, it is able to provide the desired QoS requirements for new flows while preserving the QoS of existing ones. The evaluated results show that all QoS metrics analyzed were significantly improved with the new architecture indicating that it is able to provide a highly predictive QoS support to F-HMIPv6

Comparison of IPv4 and IPv6 QoS implementations using Differentiated Services

Real-time applications such as VoIP place stringent demands on network QoS. However, IP is a best-effort service and is often unable to offer the levels of QoS required for real-time applications. One mechanism that has been commonly used to address this issue in IP networks is Differentiated Services (DiffServ). This paper describes the use of DiffServ in IPv4 and IPv6 networks, and implementation and evaluation of VoIP QoS within OPNET IT Guru. The simulation results demonstrated that DiffServ improved the performance of VoIP traffic in both IPv4 and IPv6, allowing previously congested networks to deliver VoIP with an acceptable QoS. However the simulations also showed that the performance of DiffServ in IPv6 is slightly worse than in IPv4. A number of possible reasons for this outcome are proposed along with recommendations for further research

A micro-mobility solution for supporting QoS in global mobility

Today, users want to have simultaneously mobility, Quality of Service (QoS) and be always connected to Internet. Therefore, this paper proposes a QoS micro-mobility solution able to provide QoS support for global mobility. The solution comprises enhancements in the mobility management of Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) and in the resources management of Differentiated Services (DiffServ) QoS model. The mobility management of MIPv6 was extended with fast and local handovers to improve its efficiency in micro-mobility scenarios with frequent handovers. The DiffServ resource management has been extended with adaptive and dynamic QoS provisioning to improve resources utilization in mobile IP networks. Further, in order to improve resources utilization the mobility and QoS messages were coupled, providing a resource management able to, proactively, react to mobile events. The performance improvement of the proposed solution and the model parametrization was evaluated using a simulation model. 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, keeps up unchangeable with MN mobility.(undefined

Towards scalable end-to-end QoS provision for VoIP applications

The growth of the Internet and the development of its new applications have increased the demand for providing a certain level of resource assurance and service support. The concept of ensuring quality of service (QoS) has been introduced in order to provide the support and assurance for these services. Different QoS mechanisms, such as integrated services (IntServ) and differentiated services (DiffServ), have been developed and introduced to provide different levels of QoS provision. However, IntServ can suffer from scalability issues that make it infeasible for large-scale network implementations. On the other hand, the aggregated-based per-flow technique of DiffServ does not provide such an end-to-end QoS guarantee. Recently, the IETF have proposed a new QoS architecture that implements IntServ over DiffServ in order to provide an end-to-end QoS for scalable networks. Hence, it became possible to provide and support a certain level of QoS for some delay sensitive and bandwidth-demanding applications such as voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). With regard to VoIP applications, delay, jitter and packet loss are crucial issues that have to be taken into consideration for any VoIP system design and such parameters need a distinct level of QoS support

A QoS-enable solution for mobile environments

This paper addresses the problem of designing a suitable Quality of Service (QoS) solution for mobile environments. The proposed solution deploys a dynamic QoS provisioning scheme able to deal with service protection during node mobility within a local domain, presenting extensions to deal with global mobility. The dynamic QoS provisioning encompasses a QoS architecture that uses explicit and implicit setup mechanisms to request resources from the network for the purpose of supporting control plane functions and optimizing resource allocation. Abstract--- For efficient resource allocation, the resource and mobility management schemes have been coupled resulting in a QoS/Mobility aware network architecture able to react proactively to mobility events. Both management schemes have been optimized to work together, in order to support seamless handovers for mobile users running real-time applications. Abstract--- The analysis of performance improvement and the model parametrization of the proposed solution have been evaluated using simulation. Simulation results show that the solution avoids network congestion and also the starvation of less priority DiffServ classes. Moreover, the results also show that bandwidth utilization for priority classes is levered and that the QoS offered to Mobile Node's (MN's) applications, within each DiffServ class, is maintained in spite of MN mobility. Abstract--- The proposed model is simple, easy to implement and takes into account the mobile Internet requirements. Simulation results show that this new methodology is effective and able to provide QoS services adapted to application requests

Evaluating rate-estimation for a mobility and QoS-aware network architecture

In a nearby future wireless networks will run applications with special QoS requirements. FHMIP is an effective scheme to reduce Mobile IPv6 handover disruption but it does not deal with any other specific QoS requirement. Therefore new traffic management schemes are needed in order to provide QoS guarantees to real-time applications and this implies network mobility optimizations and congestion control support. Traffic management schemes should deal with QoS requirements during handover and should use some resource management strategy in order to achieve this. In this article a new resource management scheme for DiffServ QoS model is proposed, to be used by access routers as an extension to FHMIP micromobility protocol. In order to prevent QoS deterioration, access routers pre-evaluate the impact of accepting all traffic from a mobile node, previous to the handover. This pre-evaluation and post decision on whether or not to accept any, or all, of this new traffic is based on a measurement based admission control procedure. This mobility and QoS-aware network architecture, integrating a simple signaling protocol, a traffic descriptor, and exhibiting adaptive behavior has been implemented and tested using ns-2. All measurements and decisions are based on DiffServ class-of-service aggregations, thus avoiding large flow state information maintenance. Rate estimators are essential mechanisms to the efficiency of this QoS-aware overall architecture. Therefore, in order to be able to choose the rate estimator that better fits this global architecture, two rate estimators - Time Sliding Window (TSW) and Exponential Moving Average (EMA) - have been studied and evaluated by means of ns-2 simulations in QoS-aware wireless mobility scenarios.Nuno V. Lopes was supported by an FCT Grant (SFRH/BD/35245/2007