Enhanced transport protocols

The book presents mechanisms, protocols, and system architectures to achieve end-to-end Quality-of-Service (QoS) over heterogeneous wired/wireless networks in the Internet. Particular focus is on measurement techniques, traffic engineering mechanisms and protocols, signalling protocols as well as transport protocol extensions to support fairness and QoS. It shows how those mechanisms and protocols can be combined into a comprehensive end-to-end QoS architecture to support QoS in the Internet over heterogeneous wired/wireless access networks. Finally, techniques for evaluation of QoS mechanisms such as simulation and emulation are presented. The book is aimed at graduate and post-graduate students in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering with focus in data communications and networking as well as for professionals working in this area

Analysis of end-to-end multi-domain management and orchestration frameworks for software defined infrastructures: An architectural survey

Over the last couple of years, industry operators' associations issued requirements towards an end-to-end management and orchestration plane for 5G networks. Consequently, standard organisations started their activities in this domain. This article provides an analysis and an architectural survey of these initiatives and of the main requirements, proposes descriptions for the key concepts of domain, resource and service slicing, end-to-end orchestration and a reference architecture for the end-to-end orchestration plane. Then, a set of currently available or under development domain orchestration frameworks are mapped to this reference architecture. These frameworks, meant to provide coordination and automated management of cloud and networking resources, network functions and services, fulfil multi-domain (i.e. multi-technology and multi-operator) orchestration requirements, thus enabling the realisation of an end-to-end orchestration plane. Finally, based on the analysis of existing single-domain and multi-domain orchestration components and requirements, this paper presents a functional architecture for the end-to-end management and orchestration plane, paving the way to its full realisatio

Analysis of end-to-end multi-domain management and orchestration frameworks for software defined infrastructures: An architectural survey

Over the last couple of years, industry operators' associations issued requirements towards an end-to-end management and orchestration plane for 5G networks. Consequently, standard organisations started their activities in this domain. This article provides an analysis and an architectural survey of these initiatives and of the main requirements, proposes descriptions for the key concepts of domain, resource and service slicing, end-to-end orchestration and a reference architecture for the end-to-end orchestration plane. Then, a set of currently available or under development domain orchestration frameworks are mapped to this reference architecture. These frameworks, meant to provide coordination and automated management of cloud and networking resources, network functions and services, fulfil multi-domain (i.e. multi-technology and multi-operator) orchestration requirements, thus enabling the realisation of an end-to-end orchestration plane. Finally, based on the analysis of existing single-domain and multi-domain orchestration components and requirements, this paper presents a functional architecture for the end-to-end management and orchestration plane, paving the way to its full realisation

Provisioning QoS in Inter-domain Traffic Engineering

This work describes an architectural framework that allows inter-domain Traffic Engineering Label Switched Paths (TE-LSPs) with guaranteed quality of service (QoS) to be setup. Such TE-LSPs, called EQ-links, are setup by coordinating path computation elements (PCEs) of neighboring autonomous systems (ASs) along a pre-determined inter-AS path, computed through cooperative interaction between pairs of neighboring ASs. After defining the architectural requirements for the framework, we describe and analyze the Inter-AS Path Computation Protocol (IA-PCP), which computes an interdomain path at the AS level, i.e., selecting a sequence of ASs to the destination, based on a loose source routing approach. The results of the IA-PCP computations are then fed to the PCEs for complete path computation. The proposed architecture has been actually implemented within the testbed of the EuQoS project, which is aimed at enabling end-to-end QoS in the Internet. We report results related to the setup time of EQ-links, measured in the pan-European testbed of the EuQoS project, showing that path computation and setup takes an affordable time overhead

Multi-Operator Orchestration of Connectivity Services Exploiting Stateful BRPC and BGP-LS in the 5GEx Sandbox

QoS-based connectivity coordinated by the 5GEx Multi-domain Orchestrator exploiting novel stateful BRPC is demonstrated for the first time over a multi-operator multi-technology transport network within the European 5GEx Sandbox, including Segment Routing and optical domains

On Multi-Domain Connection Admission Control in the EuQoS System

This paper describes an approach for performing a Connection Admission Control (CAC) function that is investigated in the EuQoS system designed for providing QoS over a heterogeneous, multi-domain network. The CAC plays a key role in QoS provision since it limits the volume of submitted traffic and, in this way, guarantees the assumed QoS level for transferred packet flows. The CAC algorithms are associated with specific end-to-end Classes of Service (CoS). In the EuQoS system we define a set of CoSs that are supported by the system. Each CoS is designed for transferring data corresponding to given type of applications (as voice, video-conference, high data transfer, video on demand etc.) with assuring appropriate QoS level, expressed in the form of packet loss ratio, mean packet transfer delay and packet delay variation. To cope with multi- domain network, the CAC is performed in many places in the EuQoS system. More specifically, the CAC is distributed horizontally, among the different QoS domains, as well as vertically, among Network Technology Independent (NTI) and Network Technology Dependent (NTD) infrastructures developed by EuQoS. NTD infrastructure allows CAC to interact with the underlying networks, such as WiFi, UMTS, LAN/Ethernet, xDSL, Satellite, and IP

EuQoS: End-to-End QoS over Heterogeneous Networks

The IST European Project EuQoS ("End-to-End QoS over Heterogeneous Networks") has defined a NGN architecture that builds, uses and manages the end-to-end QoS path across different administrative domains and heterogeneous networks (UMTS, xDSL, Ethernet, WiFi and Satellite access networks and IP/MPLS domains). The architecture follows a model more similar to Internet open architecture than to IMS: it provides to the end user a clear interface that allows it to request (without changing its Application Signaling protocol) which kind of service is required, regardless of the Service Provider particular policies (meeting regulators? and Internet users? Net Neutrality requirement). This allows the Network Operator to take advantage of the new Internet Services as the driver for a new commercial offer based on advanced connectivity to the end user. In this article we present the defined QoS Framework, which has been developed and validated by the Project

On the scalability of connectivity services in a multi-operator orchestrator sandbox

The paper investigates the performance of a multi-domain orchestrator (MdO) deployed in a real multi-domain European testbed. Results show how the MdO prototype scales well with the number of domains advertised and connectivity services provisioned

Orchestrating QoS-based connectivity services in a multi-operator sandbox

One of the main features of 5G networks is the coordinated orchestration of both information technology (IT) and connectivity resources. This enables the deployment of a flexible and programmable architecture able to provision end-to-end services with different (and sometimes quite) stringent quality of service (QoS) constraints. In this paradigm, service orchestration may take place over single or multiple administrative domains. The 5G Exchange (5GEx) project, building on the software-defined network and the network function virtualization (NFV) concepts, targets the design and the implementation of a multi-domain orchestrator (MdO) prototype for the automatic provisioning of network service across multiple administrative domains. This paper presents an architectural solution, designed and implemented in the context of the 5GEx MdO prototype, that can be used to establish end-to-end connectivity tunnels with QoS constraints (i.e., bandwidth and/or end-to-end delay) connecting virtualized network functions deployed in remote data centers controlled by different providers by means of an innovative stateful backward recursive path-computation-element-based computation procedure. The proposed solution has been experimentally validated in terms of scalability, reliability, and end-to-end workflow proof-of-concept. Results show how the designed solution permits the automatic establishment of QoS-based end-to-end tunnels spanning across multi-technology and multi-operator network domains. The orchestration scheme does not present scalability issues for either the advertisement of resources or for the provisioning of connectivity services. Moreover, no issues have been identified from the reliability point of view