Edge-limited scalable QoS flow set-up

Although the Differentiated Services architecture supports scalable packet forwarding based on aggregate flows, the detailed procedure of Quality of Service (QoS) flow set-up within this architecture has not been well established. In this paper we explore the possibility of a scalable QoS flow set-up using a sink-tree paradigm. The paradigm initially constructs a sink tree at each egress edge router using network topology and bandwidth information provided by a QoS extended version of Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), which is a widely used link-state routing protocol. Our sink-tree paradigm dynamically reallocates network bandwidths online according to traffic demands. As a consequence, our paradigm easily supports QoS routing, resource allocation, and admission control at ingress edge routers without consulting core routers in a way that the QoS flow set-up time and overhead are minimized. Simulation results are very encouraging in that the proposed methodology requires significantly less communication overhead in setting up QoS flows compared to the traditional per-flow signaling-based methodology while still maintaining high resource utilization.