Common channel signaling in the AT&T US 5ESS switch

A brief history of the evolution that has led to the development of Signaling System No.7 (SS7) capabilities on the 5ESS switch is presented, and the hardware and software components that provide the SS7 functionality for the 5ESS switch are described. Specifically, the functionality provided by the Common Network Interface (CNI) ring, which has been used on several AT&T SS7 products is discussed. The 5ESS switch-specific common channel signaling (CCS) transport software (which is responsible for the transport of SS7 messages among 5ESS switch processing elements), the user interfaces (which provide customer administration of switch data, color display of status information, reports on the state of the SS7 network, and the tests to verify message routing through the network), and message routing itself are discussed. The SS7 ISDN user part (ISUP) and transaction capabilities application (TCAP) functionalities implemented in 5ESS switch software are described in terms of how they fit into the 5ESS switch architecture. SS7 call handling capacities and the ways in which reliability challenges are met are described     

Performance modeling of Signaling System No.7

The layered performance modeling approach is refined and extended to cover the latest CCITT Blue Book specifications. Specific submodels for the higher-level functional blocks, such as the message transfer part (MTP) level 3, the signaling connection control part (SCCP), the ISDN user part (ISDN-UP), and the transaction capabilities application part (TCAP), are given in a generic way, explicitly. With these submodels, generic models for signaling points and signaling transfer points are constructed. The major functional parts of the layered protocol architecture of SS7 are modeled in a generic way by extended queuing network elements such as full duplex flow controlled links, priority processors, multiple-chain multiple-class traffic streams, or elements for segmenting and reassembling of messages. The analysis of the whole network starts from a global traffic flow analysis, which takes all the different signaling message types, their paths through the network, and the load into account. The overall performance measures, such as end-to-end transfer times, are found from all the component delays. The analytical results have been validated by simulation, revealing a high degree of accuracy     

Routing and congestion control in common channel Signaling SystemNo.7

The routing and congestion control function of Signaling System No.7 (SS7) are described. The elements of the SS7 protocol functional division include message transfer part (MTP), signaling correction control part (SCCP), ISDN user part (ISUP), and transaction capabilities (TC). The routing function, which takes place at the MTP and SCCP, and the congestion control function, which is present in multiple layers, are discussed. This includes MTP level 2, MTP level 3 by signaling traffic flow control procedures, and flow control for connection-oriented services of SCCP. To illustrate the unique capabilities present in SS7, the routing and congestion control functions in SS7 are compared to other common connectionless network layers. Performance considerations in routing and congestion control are discussed     

Analysis of the link error monitoring protocols in the commonchannel signaling network

Motivated by the excessive link status changes observed in some field operations of the common channel signaling (CCS) network, the authors provide a detailed analysis of the signaling link error monitoring algorithms in the Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) protocol. These algorithms determine when to fail a link due to excessive error rates and when to put a failed link back into service. The analysis shows that, under current SS7 specifications of the error monitoring algorithms, the probability of a signaling link oscillating in and out of service could be high, depending on the traffic load, signal unit size, and the statistical nature of errors (bursty or random). The link oscillation phenomenon could become worse as longer Transaction Capability Application Part (TCAP) messages for transaction-based services (e.g., 800 Service) are carried in the CCS networks. While the risk to the existing network may not be high due to the light loads carried at present, there is still a need to study the error monitoring issues thoroughly     

A REASSEMBLY STRATEGY FOR REDUCING IN/PCS SIGNALLING TRAFFIC

This paper proposes a simple assembly/disassembly part (ADP) for the signalling system no. 7 (SS7) protocol to reduce the signalling traffic loads in intelligent networks (IN) and personal communication service (PCS) networks. The ADP combines two or more messages with the same destinations into a single message, thereby reducing signalling traffic without affecting SS7 protocol operations. The numerical results show that the proposed method can reduce traffic among signalling points 9∼17%.     

Threshold-based congestion control for the SS7 signaling network inthe GSM digital cellular network

This paper considers the congestion control scheme for the SS7 signaling network in the group special mobile (GSM) digital cellular network. This congestion control scheme is based on monitoring the SS7 link buffer occupancy. In this scheme, a congestion onset message is sent to the user parts of the SS7 network when the buffer occupancy exceeds a certain threshold, and, subsequently, a congestion abatement message is sent when the buffer occupancy goes below another threshold. Upon receipt of the congestion onset message, the user parts are expected to “intelligently” throttle the user traffic (reduce the traffic rate) so as to yield speedy recovery from congestion. Subsequently, on receipt of the abatement message, the user traffic is restored to precongestion levels. This paper primarily proposes appropriate choice of throttles and an algorithmic procedure to size the thresholds so as to yield good performance during congestion. The paper also addresses some implementation issues related to the throttles. Finally, it considers the effects of delays for the onset and abatement messages in reaching the user parts on the performance and parameters of the congestion control scheme     

Congestion and flow control in Signaling System No. 7-impacts ofintelligent networks and new services

Focuses on the transient performance analysis of the congestion and flow control mechanisms in CCITT Signaling System No. 7 (SS7). Special attention is directed to the impacts of the introduction of intelligent services and new applications, e.g., Freephone, credit card services, user-to-user signaling, etc. In particular, the authors show that signaling traffic characteristics like signaling scenarios or signaling message length as well as end-to-end signaling capabilities have a significant influence on the congestion and flow control and, therefore, on the real-time signaling performance. One important result of the performance studies is that if, e.g., intelligent services are introduced, the SS7 congestion and flow control does not work correctly. To solve this problem, some reinvestigations into these mechanisms would be necessary. Therefore, some approaches, e.g., modification of the signaling connection control part (SCCP) congestion control, usage of the SCCP relay function, or a redesign of the message transfer part (MTP) flow control procedures are discussed in order to guarantee the efficacy of the congestion and flow control mechanisms also in the future     

On traffic scaling transformation at ingress optical burst switches

Ingress nodes in optical burst switching (OBS) networks are responsible for assembling burst from incoming packets and forwarding these bursts into the OBS network core. Changes in the statistical characteristics of a traffic stream at an ingress switch can affect the capacity of the network to provide quality of service. Therefore, the statistical characteristics of the output flow of an ingress node must be known for appropriate network dimensioning. This paper evaluates the impact of burst assembly mechanisms on the scaling properties of multifractal traffic flows. Results show that the factor most relevant in determining the nature of the output traffic flow is the relationship between the cut-off time scale of the input traffic and the time scale of assembly threshold. Moreover, a procedure for the detection of the cut-off scale of incoming traffic is introduced.     

Performance analysis of handover delay and buffer capacity in mobile OpenFlow‐based networks

Software‐defined networking (SDN) is a network concept that brings significant benefits for the mobile cellular operators. In an SDN‐based core network, the average service time of an OpenFlow switch is highly influenced by the total capacity and type of the output buffer, which is used for temporary storage of the incoming packets. In this work, the main goal is to model the handover delay due to the exchange of OpenFlow‐related messages in mobile SDN networks. The handover delay is defined as the overall delay experienced by the mobile node within the handover procedure, when reestablishing an ongoing session from the switch in the source eNodeB to the switch in the destination eNodeB. We propose a new analytical model, and we compare two systems with different SDN switch designs that model a continuous time Markov process by using quasi‐birth–death processes: (1) single shared buffer without priority (model SFB), used for all output ports for both control and user traffic, and (2) two isolated buffers with priority (model priority finite buffering [PFB]), one for control and the other for user plane traffic, where the control traffic is always prioritized. The two proposed systems are compared in terms of total handover delay and minimal buffer capacity needed to satisfy a certain packet error ratio imposed by the link. The mathematical modeling is verified via extensive simulations. In terms of handover delay, the results show that the model PFB outperforms the model SFB, especially for networks with high number of users and high probability of packet‐in messages. As for the buffer dimensioning analysis, for lower arrival rates, low number of users, and low probability of packet‐in messages, the model SFB has the advantage of requiring a smaller buffer size.     

An analysis of queuing strategies for SCA data broadcast systems

Subcarrier audio channels (SCAs) are used to support a wide-area data communication system. Text or data messages can be transmitted nationally using satellite delivery, and locally using FM broadcasting stations' subcarriers. The time delay that messages experience in the national buffer at the satellite head-end or the local buffer is examined. The delay for various throughput data rates is evaluated to identify an optimum range for this capacity. A realistic set of messages statistics is developed to model SCA traffic. Three different queueing strategies are used to examine the delay that messages obeying these statistics would experience: first-come-first-served, fixed-priority, and delay-dependent priority. It is shown that, as the throughput is increased, the effect of priority on the system is less discernible. As the output capacity is decreased, the effect of a priority structure can be seen to enhance traffic flow. Total message time delay is examined using a delay-dependent priority scheme. Results indicate that the choice of an appropriate queuing strategy will enhance the flow of priority message traffic     

Queuing disciplines and passive congestion control in byte-streamnetworks

The mean delay and throughput characteristics of various trunk queuing disciplines of the FIFO (first in, first out) and round-robin types for byte-stream data networks are investigated. It is shown that, under normal traffic, high-speed trunks substantially reduce queuing delays. Almost any queuing discipline will give acceptable delay if the backbone network is sufficiently faster than the access lines. In the absence of high-speed trunks, both the packet FIFO and the round-robin discipline can be augmented with a priority queue that expedites single-packet messages, which may carry network control signals or echoplex characters. In FIFO-type disciplines, the mean delays of messages that do not go through the priority queue depend on the overall message length distribution. A sprinkling of very long messages can significantly increase the mean delays of other messages. In disciplines of round-robin type, the mean delay of each message type is not affected by the presence of very long messages of other types     

七号信令网MTP3层安全机制分析

七号信令网络由于缺乏安全机制而存在诸多安全漏洞。通过分析攻击者如何利用MTP3层的网络管理消息对七号信令网实施攻击,提出用密钥交换协议和认证头协议对MTP3层进行安全保护,从而实现了信令节点间的相互认证和对消息的完整性保护,增强了七号信令网络的安全性。     

Analysis of the effects of SS7 message discard schemes on callcompletion rates during overload

The author considers the performance of a Signaling System Number 7 network when the routing processors, as opposed to transmission facilities, of signaling transfer points are overloaded. The choice of overload controls in such a situation is implementation-dependent, with an option of simply discarding messages in excess of the signaling transfer point (STP) processing capability. It is this option that is studied. Call completion performance, rather than message throughput is considered as being the primary performance measure of interest since it most accurately reflects the service provided to customers. To determine realistic call completion estimates. the authors explicitly incorporate into their analysis the effects of application-level recovery procedures and customer reattempts, both of which significantly impact the service levels achieved. In so doing, they demonstrate that message throughput can be a very misleading measure of the network's ability to provide service. The need for some form of feedback mechanism to the traffic sources that will allow them to appropriately control traffic entering the network is demonstrated     

A non-competing hybrid optical burst switch architecture for QoS differentiation

In this paper, we present a new hybrid optical burst switch architecture (HOBS) that takes advantage of the pre-transmission idle time during lightpath establishment. In dynamic circuit switching (wavelength routing) networks, capacity is immediately hard-reserved upon the arrival of a setup message at a node, but it is used at least a round-trip time delay later. This waste of resources is significant in optical multi-gigabit networks and can be used to transmit traffic of a lower class of service in a non-competing way. The proposed hybrid OBS architecture, takes advantage of this idle time to transmit one-way optical bursts of a lower class of service, while high priority data explicitly requests and establishes end-to-end lightpaths. In the proposed scheme, the two control planes (two-way and one-way OBS reservation) are merged, in the sense that each SETUP message, used for the two-way lightpath establishment, is associated with one-way burst transmission and therefore it is modified to carry routing and overhead information for the one-way traffic as well. In this paper, we present the main architectural features of the proposed hybrid scheme and further we assess its performance by conducting simulation experiments on the NSF net backbone topology. The extensive network study revealed that the proposed hybrid architecture can achieve and sustain an adequate burst transmission rate with a finite worst case delay.     

Providing deterministic quality-of-service guarantees on WDM optical networks

A major challenge in the design of future generation high-speed networks is the provision of guaranteed quality-of-service (QoS) for a wide variety of multimedia applications. In this paper we investigate the problem of providing QoS guarantees to real-time variable length messages (e.g., IP packets) in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks. In particular, we propose a systematic mechanism comprised of admission control, traffic regulation, and message scheduling that provide guaranteed performance service for real-time application streams made up of variable-length messages. We formulate an analytical model based on the theory of max-plus algebra to evaluate the deterministic bounded message delay in a WDM network environment using our proposed QoS guarantee mechanism to determine the "schedulability conditions" of multimedia application streams, We also conduct a series of discrete-event and trace-driven simulations to verify the accuracy of the analytical model. The simulation results demonstrate that the analytic delay bound we obtained for our WDM optical network is valid and accurate.     

Performance of a coded band-limited spread-spectrum multiple-accessscheme using channel sensing

The authors introduce and study the message delay and channel throughput behavior of a channel-sense multiple access/spread-spectrum (CSMA/SS) scheme. It is assumed that each net station can gain information as to whether the total number of ongoing transmissions exceeds a given threshold, M, or not. This entails, for example, the availability of an ancillary low-rate out-of-band or in-band signaling channel. A transmitting station will abort its transmission upon the reception of a signaling message indicating that the current number of transmissions exceeds the prescribed threshold. A random-access scheme is used to control the access of messages to the channel. Using derived performance equations, numerical results are presented illustrating the delay-throughout performance of such a CSMA/SS scheme. Key parameters involved in this performance analysis include: channel bandwidth, error-correction code capability, and propagation delay. Given an average message length, an activity threshold level M can be selected to yield the best delay-throughput performance characteristics     

RPB-MD: Providing robust message dissemination for vehicular ad hoc networks

To improve traffic safety and efficiency, it is vital to reliably send traffic-related messages to vehicles in the targeted region in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In this paper, we propose a novel scheme, relative position based message dissemination (RPB-MD), to reliably and efficiently disseminate messages to the vehicles in the zone-of-relevance. Firstly, the relative position based (RPB) addressing model is proposed to effectively define the intended receivers in the zone-of-relevance. To ensure high message delivery ratio and low delivery delay, directional greedy broadcast routing (DGBR) is introduced to make a group of candidate nodes hold the message for high reliability. Moreover, to guarantee efficiency, the protocol time parameters are designed adaptively according to the message attributes and local vehicular traffic density. The protocol feasibility is analyzed to illustrate the robustness and reliability of RPB-MD. Simulation results show that RPB-MD, compared with representative existing schemes, achieves high delivery ratio, limited overhead, reasonable delay and high network reachability under different vehicular traffic density and data sending rate.     

The helical window token ring

An access rule for token ring local-area networks called the helical-window token-ring protocol is introduced. It features the use of a window that limits the allowable messages a token-holding station can send. With the window, the operation of the protocol approaches that of a central single-server queuing system in the sense that messages are delivered in near first-come-first-served order on a network-wide basis. The introduction of the window also makes analysis of the networks tractable. Exact analytical formulas for the capacity and for the mean, variance, and moment-generating function of the message waiting time are derived. Numerical simulation is used to verify the results. Comparisons with continuous polling systems show that the imposition of the windowed access rule can lead to significant reductions in the delay variance (at the cost of increasing the mean system time) when the traffic is heavy and/or the message transmission time is large with respect to the walk time of the ring     

SCTP: state of the art in research, products, and technical challenges

The stream control transmission protocol (STCP) is being standardized by the IEFT as a reliable transport protocol to transport SS7signaling messages over IP networks. Due to its attractive features such as multistreaming and multihoming, SCTP has received much attention from the network community, in terms of both research and development. This article introduces the main features of SCTP, and discusses the state of the art in SCTP research and development activities. We also provide a survey of the available products that use SCTP. Finally with a view to stimulating further research in this area, the challenges faced by the SCTP research community are identified.     

Admission policies for integrated voice and data traffic in CDMApacket radio networks

The authors derive optimal admission policies for integrated voice and data traffic in packet radio networks employing code division multiple access (CDMA) with direct-sequence spread spectrum (DS/SS) signaling. The network performance is measured in terms of the average blocking probability of voice calls and the average delay and packet loss probability of data messages. The admission scheme determines the number of newly arrived voice users that are accepted in the network so that the long-term blocking probability of voice calls is minimized. In addition, new data arrivals are rejected if the mean delay or the packet loss probability of data exceeds a desirable prespecified level. A semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) is used to model the system operation. Then, a value iteration algorithm is used to derive the optimal admission control. Two models for the other-user interference of the CDMA system are considered: one based on thresholds and another based on the graceful degradation of the CDMA system performance, and their performance is compared. These admission policies find application in emerging commercial CDMA packet radio networks including cellular networks, personal communication networks, and networks of LEO satellites for global communications