Gestão de recursos em redes AII-IP

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesA banalização do contacto com a Internet, despertou num crescente número de indivíduos, a interacção com equipamentos, tecnologias, serviços e funcionalidades que se tornam cada vez mais, parte integrante do seu estilo de vida. Esta explosão, tanto no número de acessos, como na variedade de serviços, veio colocar novos desafios às redes, no que toca ao tratamento dos fluxos de informação gerados pelos dispositivos terminais. Serviços com características de tempo-real impõem requisitos de qualidade de serviço (QoS) bastante objectivos, em termos de perdas, atraso e variação do atraso sofridos pelos pacotes IP ao atravessar uma rede baseada nessa tecnologia. Elementos inteligentes, gestores de recursos apresentam-se como uma das soluções mais eficazes no controlo dos parâmetros de qualidade de serviço. Por sua vez, mecanismos de controlo de admissão cada vez mais sofisticados, apresentam-se como peças-chave no centro dos motores dos gestores de recursos referidos. Esta Dissertação define e testa um modelo híbrido para um módulo de controlo de admissão, a integrar numa entidade gestora de recursos IP. O modelo utiliza uma filosofia de aprendizagem baseada em experiência, alimentada por uma plataforma de medidas. O processo de aprendizagem é efectuado por meio do registo e actualização do comportamento da rede. Este conhecimento vai permitir inferir qual o padrão de tráfego da rede e utilizar essa informação para prever a ocorrência de sobrecargas e fim das mesmas. Desta forma é então possível aplicar um factor de overbooking permitindo uma conservatividade adaptativa, aumentando assim a utilização da rede e em simultâneo proteger de uma forma mais eficaz, os níveis de QoS da rede. Através de procedimentos experimentais utilizando o simulador OMNET++, verifica-se que o modelo proposto permite um aumento na utilização de rede, mantendo os níveis de QoS dentro de intervalos predefinidos.As the average population gained generalized access to the Internet, it also became more exposed to a vast number of equipments, technologies, services and functionalities, which are strongly becoming an integrated part of its lifestyle. This explosion in access numbers, as well as in service diversity, placed new challenges to the networks, as far as the treatment of terminal generated information flows. Real-time services put well defined constraints of quality of service, for IP packet loss, delay, and jitter. Resource management entities present themselves as one of the more efficient solutions to control the quality of service parameters. Meanwhile, the more sophisticated admission control mechanisms play key-roles in the center of the resource manager’s engines. This thesis presents and tests a hybrid model for an admission control module, to be integrated in an IP resource manager. The model has roots on an experience based learning philosophy, fed and regulated by a measurement platform. The learning procedure is ensured by the storage and update of the network’s behavior. This knowledge will allow the generation of the network’s traffic pattern and the use of that information to predict overload and its end. This way, the use of an overbooking factor is possible, allowing and adaptative conservativeness, enhancing network usage while protecting more accurately the network’s QoS levels. It is verified, by means of experimental results, using the OMNET++ simulator, that the proposed model allows an increase in network usage, while maintaining the network under predefined QoS levels

Experience-Based Admission Control with Type-Specific Overbooking

Experience-based admission control (EBAC) is a hybrid approach combining the classical parameter-based and measurement-based admission control schemes. EBAC calculates an appropriate overbooking factor used to overbook link capacities with resource reservations in packet-based networks. This overbooking factor correlates with the average peak-to-mean rate ratio of all admitted traffic flows on the link. So far, a single overbooking factor is calculated for the entire traffic aggregate. In this paper, we propose type-specific EBAC which provides a compound overbooking factor considering different types of traffic that subsume flows with similar peak-to-mean rate ratios. The concept can be well implemented since it does not require type-specific traffic measurements. We give a proof of concept for this extension and compare it with the conventional EBAC approach. We show that EBAC with type-specific overbooking leads to better resource utilization under normal conditions and to faster response times for changing traffic mixes

Improving Experience-Based Admission Control through Traffic Type Awareness

Experience-based admission control (EBAC) is a hybrid approach combining the classical parameter-based and measurement-based admission control. EBAC calculates an appropriate overbooking factor used to overbook link capacities with resource reservations in packet-switched networks. This overbooking factor correlates with the average peak-to-mean rate ratio of all admitted traffic flows on the link. So far, a single overbooking factor is calculated for the entire traffic aggregate. In this paper, we propose type-specific EBAC which provides a compound overbooking factor considering different types of traffic that subsume flows with similar peak-to-mean rate ratios. The concept can be well implemented since it does not require measurements of type-specific traffic aggregates. We give a proof of concept for this extension and compare it with the conventional EBAC approach. We show that EBAC with type-specific overbooking leads to better resource utilization under normal conditions and to faster response times for changing traffic mixes

Experience-Based Admission Control in the Presence of Traffic Changes

This article investigates the transient behavior of experience-based admission control (EBAC) in case of traffic changes. EBAC is a robust and resource-efficient admission control (AC) mechanism used for reservation overbooking of link capacities in packet-based networks. Recent analyses gave a proof of concept for EBAC and showed its efficiency and robustness through steady state simulation on a single link carrying traffic with constant properties. The contribution of this paper is an examination of the memory from which EBAC gains its experience and which strongly influences the behavior of EBAC in stationary and nonstationary state. For the latter, we investigate the transient behavior of the EBAC mechanism through simulation of strong traffic changes which are characterized by either a sudden decrease or increase of the traffic intensity. Our results show that the transient behavior of EBAC partly depends on its tunable memory and that it copes well with even strongly changing traffic characteristics

Effiziente Konzepte und Leistungsbewertung zum Ressourcen Management in zukünftigen IP Netzen

Next generation networks (NGNs) must integrate the services of current circuit-switched telephone networks and packet-switched data networks. This convergence towards a unified communication infrastructure necessitates from the high capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operational expenditures (OPEX) due to the coexistence of separate networks for voice and data. In the end, NGNs must offer the same services as these legacy networks and, therefore, they must provide a low-cost packet-switched solution with real-time transport capabilities for telephony and multimedia applications. In addition, NGNs must be fault-tolerant to guarantee user satisfaction and to support business-critical processes also in case of network failures. A key technology for the operation of NGNs is the Internet Protocol (IP) which evolved to a common and well accepted standard for networking in the Internet during the last 25 years. There are two basically different approaches to achieve QoS in IP networks. With capacity overprovisioning (CO), an IP network is equipped with sufficient bandwidth such that network congestion becomes very unlikely and QoS is maintained most of the time. The second option to achieve QoS in IP networks is admission control (AC). AC represents a network-inherent intelligence that admits real-time traffic flows to a single link or an entire network only if enough resources are available such that the requirements on packet loss and delay can be met. Otherwise, the request of a new flow is blocked. This work focuses on resource management and control mechanisms for NGNs, in particular on AC and associated bandwidth allocation methods. The first contribution consists of a new link-oriented AC method called experience-based admission control (EBAC) which is a hybrid approach dealing with the problems inherent to conventional AC mechanisms like parameter-based or measurement-based AC (PBAC/MBAC). PBAC provides good QoS but suffers from poor resource utilization and, vice versa, MBAC uses resources efficiently but is susceptible to QoS violations. Hence, EBAC aims at increasing the resource efficiency while maintaining the QoS which increases the revenues of ISPs and postpones their CAPEX for infrastructure upgrades. To show the advantages of EBAC, we first review today’s AC approaches and then develop the concept of EBAC. EBAC is a simple mechanism that safely overbooks the capacity of a single link to increase its resource utilization. We evaluate the performance of EBAC by its simulation under various traffic conditions. The second contribution concerns dynamic resource allocation in transport networks which implement a specific network admission control (NAC) architecture. In general, the performance of different NAC systems may be evaluated by conventional methods such as call blocking analysis which has often been applied in the context of multi-service asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks. However, to yield more practical results than abstract blocking probabilities, we propose a new method to compare different AC approaches by their respective bandwidth requirements. To present our new method for comparing different AC systems, we first give an overview of network resource management (NRM) in general. Then we present the concept of adaptive bandwidth allocation (ABA) in capacity tunnels and illustrate the analytical performance evaluation framework to compare different AC systems by their capacity requirements. Different network characteristics influence the performance of ABA. Therefore, the impact of various traffic demand models and tunnel implementations, and the influence of resilience requirements is investigated. In conclusion, the resources in NGNs must be exclusively dedicated to admitted traffic to guarantee QoS. For that purpose, robust and efficient concepts for NRM are required to control the requested bandwidth with regard to the available transmission capacity. Sophisticated AC will be a key function for NRM in NGNs and, therefore, efficient resource management concepts like experience-based admission control and adaptive bandwidth allocation for admission-controlled capacity tunnels, as presented in this work are appealing for NGN solutions.In meiner Dissertation zum Thema “Performance Evaluation of Efficient Resource Management Concepts for Next Generation IP Networks” werden im Wesentlichen zwei miteinander verwobene Konzepte zur effizienten Nutzung von Übertragungsressourcen in zukünftigen IP Netzen untersucht. Das Management solcher Ressourcen ist zur Unterstützung qualitativ hochwertiger Netzdiensten (z.B. IP Telephonie, IP TV, etc.) in Zukunft unabdingbar. Gegenwärtig werden diese Dienste durch den Einsatz hoher Übertragungskapazitäten (engl. capacity overprovisioning) in den IP Breitbandnetzen ermöglicht. Um in Spitzenlastzeiten die Qualität der Dienste aufrecht zu erhalten, sind die Bandbreiten derart hoch angesetzt, dass unter normalen Umständen die Ressourcen nur sehr schwach ausgelastet sind (im Bereich zwischen 10 und 30 Prozent). Diese Überdimensionierungslösung ist einfach zu realisieren aber auch sehr kostenintensiv, ineffizient und vor allem nicht (zukunfts-)sicher, da bei ständig steigendem Bandbreitenbedarf, die Netzkapazitäten häufig angepasst werden müssen. Eine Effizienzsteigerung bei der Ressourcennutzung in heutigen Kommunikationsnetzen ist daher ein wichtiges Kriterium für die Wirtschaftlichkeit zukünftiger IP Netze. Erreicht werden kann dies mit den Mitteln der Netzzugangskontrolle (engl. admission control, kurz AC), welche bereits in verschiedenen Formen entwickelt, untersucht und teilweise auch in heutigen IP Netzen realisiert ist. Die AC stellt eine vergleichsweise komplexe Lösung zur Aufrechterhaltung der Dienstgüte in IP Netzen dar. Daher sind einfache und effiziente Mechanismen/Automatismen zur Durchführung der AC gefordert, um deren Einsatz an Stelle der Überdimensionierung zu rechtfertigen. Den zuvor genannten Forderungen nach effizienter Ressourcennutzung entsprechend stellt der erste Hauptbeitrag der Dissertation einen neuen Ansatz zur AC dar, die so genannte erfahrungsbasierte Netzzugangskontrolle (engl. experience-based admission control, kurz EBAC). Gegenüber den existierenden alternativen, d.h. parameter- oder mess-basierten Verfahren der AC zeichnet sich die EBAC durch effiziente Ressourcennutzung und begünstigt gleichzeitig die Aufrechterhaltung der Dienstgüte. Die genaue Funktionsweise der EBAC und die simulative Leistungsuntersuchung sind in der Dissertation nachzulesen. Der zweite Themenschwerpunkt der Dissertation greift eine tunnel-basierte Netzarchitektur auf und präsentiert mit deren Hilfe eine neue Methode zur Bewertung verschiedener Bandbreitenallokationsstrategien in Kombination mit AC. Die neue Bewertungsmethode wird zwar anhand einer speziellen tunnel-basierten AC untersucht, lässt sich aber auf alle Arten so genannter budget-basierter AC anwenden. Bei der konventionellen Leistungsbewertung verschiedener AC-Systeme dienen abstrakte Blockierungswahrscheinlichkeiten als Leistungsmaß. Im Gegensatz hierzu, bewertet die neue Methode die Leistung eines AC-Systems anhand des zugehörigen Bandbreitenbedarfs in Abhängigkeit verschiedener Einflussfaktoren, z.B. der avisierten Blockierwahrscheinlichkeit des AC-Systems, der Verkehrszusammensetzung, des Verkehrsvolumens, der Verkehrsdynamik und vor allem der angewandten Bandbreitenallokationsstrategie. In zukünftigen IP Netzen müssen die Ressourcen zur Datenübertragung besser verwaltet und kontrolliert werden. Zugelassener Verkehr mit hohen Dienstgüteanforderungen muss exklusiv Bandbreite zugewiesen werden, um die geforderte Dienstgüte garantieren zu können. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen werden robuste und effiziente Konzepte zum Management von Netzressourcen benötigt. Intelligenter Netzzugangskontrolle wird eine Schlüsselfunktion in zukünftigen IP Netzen zukommen. Die in dieser Dissertation vorgestellten, effizienten Ressourcenmanagementkonzepte „erfahrungsbasierte Netzzugangskontrolle“ und „adaptive Bandbreitenallokation in zugangskontrollierten Kapazitätstunnel“ tragen zum Erreichen dieses Ziels bei