Design, implementation and evaluation of a QoS-aware transport protocol

In the context of a reconfigurable transport protocol framework, we propose a QoS-aware Transport Protocol (QSTP), specifically designed to operate over QoS-enabled networks with bandwidth guarantee. QSTP combines QoS-aware TFRC congestion control mechanism, which takes into account the network-level bandwidth reservations, with a Selective ACKnowledgment (SACK) mechanism in order to provide a QoS-aware transport service that fill the gap between QoS enabled network services and QoS constraint applications. We have developed a prototype of this protocol in the user-space and conducted a large range of measurements to evaluate this proposal under various network conditions. Our results show that QSTP allows applications to reach their negotiated QoS over bandwidth guaranteed networks, such as DiffServ/AF network, where TCP fails. This protocol appears to be the first reliable protocol especially designed for QoS network architectures with bandwidth guarantee

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-

GTFRC, a TCP friendly QoS-aware rate control for diffserv assured service

This study addresses the end-to-end congestion control support over the DiffServ Assured Forwarding (AF) class. The resulting Assured Service (AS) provides a minimum level of throughput guarantee. In this context, this article describes a new end-to-end mechanism for continuous transfer based on TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC). The proposed approach modifies TFRC to take into account the QoS negotiated. This mechanism, named gTFRC, is able to reach the minimum throughput guarantee whatever the flow’s RTT and target rate. Simulation measurements and implementation over a real QoS testbed demonstrate the efficiency of this mechanism either in over-provisioned or exactly-provisioned network. In addition, we show that the gTFRC mechanism can be used in the same DiffServ/AF class with TCP or TFRC flows

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

Energy management in communication networks: a journey through modelling and optimization glasses

The widespread proliferation of Internet and wireless applications has produced a significant increase of ICT energy footprint. As a response, in the last five years, significant efforts have been undertaken to include energy-awareness into network management. Several green networking frameworks have been proposed by carefully managing the network routing and the power state of network devices. Even though approaches proposed differ based on network technologies and sleep modes of nodes and interfaces, they all aim at tailoring the active network resources to the varying traffic needs in order to minimize energy consumption. From a modeling point of view, this has several commonalities with classical network design and routing problems, even if with different objectives and in a dynamic context. With most researchers focused on addressing the complex and crucial technological aspects of green networking schemes, there has been so far little attention on understanding the modeling similarities and differences of proposed solutions. This paper fills the gap surveying the literature with optimization modeling glasses, following a tutorial approach that guides through the different components of the models with a unified symbolism. A detailed classification of the previous work based on the modeling issues included is also proposed

Implementation and performance analysis of a QoS-aware TFRC mechanism

This paper deals with the improvement of transport protocol behaviour over the DiffServ Assured Forwarding (AF)class. The Assured Service (AS) provides a minimum throughput guarantee that classical congestion control mechanisms, like window-based in TCP or equation-based in TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC), are not able to use efficiently. In response, this paper proposes a performance analysis of a QoS aware congestion control mechanism, named gTFRC, which improves the delivery of continuous streams. The gTFRC (guaranteed TFRC) mechanism has been integrated into an Enhanced Transport Protocol (ETP) that allows protocol mechanisms to be dynamically managed and controlled. After comparing a ns-2 simulation and our implementation of the basic TFRC mechanism, we show that ETP/gTFRC extension is able to reach a minimum throughput guarantee whatever the flow’s RTT and target rate (TR) and the network provisioning conditions

Pre-Congestion Notification (PCN) Architecture

This document describes a general architecture for flow admission and termination based on pre-congestion information in order to protect the quality of service of established, inelastic flows within a single Diffserv domain.\u