TCP throughput guarantee in the DiffServ Assured Forwarding service: what about the results?

Since the proposition of Quality of Service architectures by the IETF, the interaction between TCP and the QoS services has been intensively studied. This paper proposes to look forward to the results obtained in terms of TCP throughput guarantee in the DiffServ Assured Forwarding (DiffServ/AF) service and to present an overview of the different proposals to solve the problem. It has been demonstrated that the standardized IETF DiffServ conditioners such as the token bucket color marker and the time sliding window color maker were not good TCP traffic descriptors. Starting with this point, several propositions have been made and most of them presents new marking schemes in order to replace or improve the traditional token bucket color marker. The main problem is that TCP congestion control is not designed to work with the AF service. Indeed, both mechanisms are antagonists. TCP has the property to share in a fair manner the bottleneck bandwidth between flows while DiffServ network provides a level of service controllable and predictable. In this paper, we build a classification of all the propositions made during these last years and compare them. As a result, we will see that these conditioning schemes can be separated in three sets of action level and that the conditioning at the network edge level is the most accepted one. We conclude that the problem is still unsolved and that TCP, conditioned or not conditioned, remains inappropriate to the DiffServ/AF service

Network level performance of differentiated services (diffserv) networks

The Differentiated Services (DiffServ) architecture is a promising means of providing Quality of Service (QoS) in Internet. In DiffServ networks, three service classes, or Per-hop Behaviors (PHBs), have been defined: Expedited Forwarding (EF), Assured Forwarding (AF) and Best Effort (BE). In this dissertation, the performance of DiffServ networks at the network level, such as end-to-end QoS, network stability, and fairness of bandwidth allocation over the entire network have been extensively investigated. It has been shown in literature that the end-to-end delay of EF traffic can go to infinity even in an over-provisioned network. In this dissertation, a simple scalable aggregate scheduling scheme, called Youngest Serve First (YSF) algorithm is proposed. YSF is not only able to guarantee finite end-to-end delay, but also to keep a low scheduling complexity. With respect to the Best Effort traffic, Random Exponential Marking (REM), an existing AQM scheme is studied under a new continuous time model, and its local stable condition is presented. Next, a novel virtual queue and rate based AQM scheme (VQR) is proposed, and its local stability condition has been presented. Then, a new AQM framework, Edge-based AQM (EAQM) is proposed. EAQM is easier to implement, and it achieves similar or better performance than traditional AQM schemes. With respect to the Assured Forwarding, a network-assist packet marking (NPM) scheme has been proposed. It has been demonstrated that NPM can fairly distribute bandwidth among AF aggregates based on their Committed Information Rates (CIRs) in both single and multiple bottleneck link networks

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

Advances in Internet Quality of Service

We describe recent advances in theories and architecture that support performance guarantees needed for quality of service networks. We start with deterministic computations and give applications to integrated services, differentiated services, and playback delays. We review the methods used for obtaining a scalable integrated services support, based on the concept of a stateless core. New probabilistic results that can be used for a statistical dimensioning of differentiated services are explained; some are based on classical queuing theory, while others capitalize on the deterministic results. Then we discuss performance guarantees in a best effort context; we review: methods to provide some quality of service in a pure best effort environment; methods to provide some quality of service differentiation without access control, and methods that allow an application to control the performance it receives, in the absence of network support

Theories and Models for Internet Quality of Service

We survey recent advances in theories and models for Internet Quality of Service (QoS). We start with the theory of network calculus, which lays the foundation for support of deterministic performance guarantees in networks, and illustrate its applications to integrated services, differentiated services, and streaming media playback delays. We also present mechanisms and architecture for scalable support of guaranteed services in the Internet, based on the concept of a stateless core. Methods for scalable control operations are also briefly discussed. We then turn our attention to statistical performance guarantees, and describe several new probabilistic results that can be used for a statistical dimensioning of differentiated services. Lastly, we review recent proposals and results in supporting performance guarantees in a best effort context. These include models for elastic throughput guarantees based on TCP performance modeling, techniques for some quality of service differentiation without access control, and methods that allow an application to control the performance it receives, in the absence of network support

Delay-bounded rate adaptive shaper for TCP traffic in DiffServ Internet

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Applications with different quality requirements set out the need for different Qualities of Service (QoS) to be provided in Internet. Differentiated Services (DiffServ) model is an architecture proposed to provide QoS in the Internet in a scalable way. Assured Forwarding Per Hop Behavior (AF PHB) is a QoS service class which provides a loss sensitive service. The DiffServ Service Provider (SP) delivers services to customers where traffic parameters are quantified in a Service Level Agreement (SLA). The incoming traffic from customers are policed in order to make sure that they meet the specifications in the SLA. The portion of traffic that is nonconformant with the SLA is not guaranteed to receive the service quality specified in the SLA. Shapers delay nonconformant packets in order to increase the ratio of traffic that is within the bounds specified in the SLA. If nonconformant traffic is tolerated in the SP network up to some extent, increasing the ratio of traffic that is complying with specifications in the SLA may lead to unnecessary delaying of packets and may decrease throughput. In this thesis, a shaper, called Delay-Bounded Rate-Adaptive Shaper (DBRAS), is introduced which tries to increase the ratio of traffic that conforms to the SLA while satisfying an upper-bound (Dmax) in the amount of delay it can apply to incoming packets (shaping delay). By avoiding unnecessarily large shaping delays, it is shown that throughput is increased. In order to have the shaper to adapt to changes in network topology, traffic, and different propagation delays, an adjustment algorithm is proposed where the shaper dynamically adjusts its Dmax value in order to increase throughput. The resulting shaper is called Dynamic DBRAS (D-DBRAS). The heuristic adjustment algorithm is greedy in that it adapts the maximum shaping delay in the direction where throughput increases. Results obtained from simulations show that throughput of TCP in AF PHB shaped by D-DBRAS can be increased by up to 65% compared with unshaped traffic. Simulations are performed in order to analyze effects of parameters such as propagation delay, buffer threshold levels, and offered traffic on the performance of D-DBRAS. It is also shown through simulations that by using the adjustment algorithm, the maximum shaping delay, Dmax, converges to regimes where throughput increases in response to changes in offered traffic.Balkaş, YakupM.S

Traffic Management Algorithms in Differentiated Services Networks

The Differentiated Services (DiffServ) Architecture, a Quality of Service (QoS) solution being worked on by an IETF work group, is aimed to solve the increasing problems with no service guarantees in the current Internet. New services such as video-on-demand and IP-telephony will be unusable without some sort of service guarantees on which to build applications on. A replacement architecture for the Integrated Services (IntServ) Architecture is needed because of its problems with overhead and scalability. This master thesis studies and evaluates traffic algorithms, specifically scheduling and active queue management algorithms, within the Differentiated Services area using the Network Simulator. The studies investigate Differentiated Services network stability and performance through noise influenced simulations. Results show that against unresponsive users network stability and performance mainly depends on the used scheduling algorithm

Quality Of Service Enhancement In Ip Based Networks Using Diffserv

Tez (Yüksek Lisans) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2003Thesis (M.Sc.) -- İstanbul Technical University, Institute of Science and Technology, 2003Bu çalışmada, Diffserv mimarisi ile internet üzerinde servis kalitesi sağlama tartışılmıştır. Son on yılda IP tabanlı internette servis kalitesi sağlanamıyordu. İnternette bugün sağlanabilen tek servis ‘Best Effort (BE)’ adı verilen servistir. Yani, ağ, herhangi bir paketi hedefine ulaştırırken mümkün olan en verimli yolu kullanır ancak herhangi bir garanti ya da kaynak ayırımı yapmaz. Başka bir deyişle, trafik mümkün olduğu kadar hızlı ve herhangi bir zaman sınırı ya da miktar açısından garanti verilmeden işlenir. İnternetin ticari bir yapıya bürünmesiyle ‘Servis Kalitesi’ sağlanma ihtiyacı daha da artmıştır. Bu ihtiyaç farklı mimarilerin doğmasına yol açmıştır: IntServ ve DiffServ olmak üzere.Tez çalışmasında DiffServ mimarisi problem ve avantajlarıyla ele alınmıştır. Son bölümde ise NS2 ağ simulasyon yazılımı kullanılarak DiffServ implementasyonları yapılmış sonuçları karşılaştırmalı olarak verilmiştir.In this study improving Quality of Service (QoS) on the Internet with DiffServ architecture is discussed. Within the past decade, it is certainly not support for Quality of Service (QoS) over the IP-based ubiquitous Internet. The Internet as it stands today only support one service class called -Best-Effort (BE) Service. The network would make an earnest attempt to deliver packets to their destinations but with no guarantees and/or special resources allocated for any of the packets. With another words, traffic is processed as quickly as possible but there is no guarantee as to timeliness or actual delivery or even how much can be delivered (i.e. throughput). With the rapid transformation of the Internet into a commercial infrastructure, demands for Quality of Service (QoS) have rapidly developed. This need was resulted to different architectures: IntServ and DiffServ. In the study some DiffServ implementations are discussed with their problems and gains. At the last section with using NS2 simulation programming language some DiffServ implementations are given with the compared results.Yüksek LisansM.Sc