End-to-end QoS specification issues in the converged all-IP wired and wireless environment

The emerging next-generation networking environment presents an IP-based core interconnecting many wireless radio access networks, providing ubiquitous access to end users through a vast variety of wireless devices. Although the IP protocol is the common denominator, the new environment brings together many different interconnecting domains, each following different QoS models, complicating the overall end-to-end QoS process. This article discusses the need to standardize an end-to-end QoS protocol. It does not, however, focus on the signaling mechanism, since there is currently a relevant ongoing activity in IETF. Instead, it concentrates on the formulation of the QoS information describing the QoS requirements of the session to be established. It presents the generic service specification framework that not only enables the QoS requirements of a specific session to be captured (like a generic QoS template), but also the QoS classes of each IP domain can be described according to it. Through the systematic specification of a domain's QoS classes, an intelligent automatic mapping algorithm can be applied during an end-to-end QoS request, in order to select the most appropriate service class in each domain, as well as to extract the required traffic-related parameters to perform traffic control operations, such as admission control, policing, and scheduling.     

Provisioning for interdomain quality of service: the MESCAL approach

This article presents an architecture for supporting interdomain QoS across the multi-provider global Internet. While most research to date has focused on supporting QoS within a single administrative domain, mature solutions are not yet available for the provision of QoS across multiple domains administered by different organizations. The architecture described in this article encompasses the full set of functions required in the management (service and resource), control and data planes for the provision of end-to-end QoS-based IP connectivity services. We use the concept of QoS classes and show how these can be cascaded using service level specifications (SLSs) agreed between BGP peer domains to construct a defined end-to-end QoS. We illustrate the architecture by describing a typical operational scenario.     

Efficient Resource Allocation for Policy-Based Wireless/Wireline Interworking

This paper proposes efficient resource allocation techniques for a policy-based wireless/wireline interworking architecture, where quality of service (QoS) provisioning and resource allocation is driven by the service level agreement (SLA). For end-to-end IP QoS delivery, each wireless access domain can independently choose its internal resource management policies to guarantee the customer access SLA (CASLA), while the border-crossing traffic is served by a core network following policy rules to meet the transit domain SLA (TRSLA). Particularly, we propose an engineered priority resource sharing scheme for a voice/data integrated wireless domain, where the policy rules allow cellular-only access or cellular/WLAN interworked access. By such a resource sharing scheme, the CASLA for each service class is met with efficient resource utilization, and the interdomain TRSLA bandwidth requirement can be easily determined. In the transit domain, the traffic load fluctuation from upstream access domains is tackled by an inter-TRSLA resource sharing technique, where the spare capacity from underloaded TRSLAs can be exploited by the overloaded TRSLAs to improve resource utilization. Advantages of the inter-SLA resource sharing technique are that the core network service provider can freely design the policy rules that define underload and overload status, determine the bandwidth reservation, and distribute the spare resources among bandwidth borrowers, while all the policies are supported by a common set of resource allocation techniques.     

COPS-SLS usage for dynamic policy-based QoS management over heterogeneous IP networks

While each IP domain can deploy its own strategy to manage network resources, multimedia traffic needs end-to-end QoS management to obtain an overall service level. The provision of end-to-end QoS over a heterogeneous environment implies the negotiation of a mutually acceptable SLA. This article presents the use of the COPS-SLS protocol as a generic protocol for automatic service-level negotiation and the integration of this protocol in an overall QoS management architecture to manage service levels over multiple domains deploying different QoS technologies.     

Class-based multicast routing in interdomain scenarios

DiffServ-like domains bring new challenges to quality of service (QoS) multicast routing simply by shifting the focus from individual flows into classes of flows. Packets are marked at edge routers and receive differentiated treatment according to the class and not the flow that they belong to. DiffServ therefore became adverse to multicast, as packet replication inside the domain may require classification and remarking functions not present in core nodes. At the interdomain level, no doubt multicast QoS complexity is increased by the interleaving of DiffServ and non-Diffserv domains, making it more difficult to address QoS multicast in an end-to-end perspective. In today’s real interconnection world, classes of service have no meaning in certain links of a full interdomain path. While the problem is not new, as already pointed out, there are no real efforts to bring multicast back to a class-of-service domain without compromising its model of operation. In this article, we present an innovative multicast QoS routing strategy, clearly designed for the new class-of-service paradigm. The solution is based upon the construction of multiple trees, one per class of service available, while still allowing receivers to shift for source-specific trees in its own class of service. The strategy is presented in a full end-to-end perspective. Intradomain trees use differentiated routing paths thus helping traffic differentiation. Intradomain receivers are allowed to shift from shared trees into an adequate class-of-service source tree. At interdomain level, each class-of-service interdomain tree branch is accomplished by means of an improved path probing strategy enabling for QoS path establishment. This paper presents this new strategy, and associated protocols, for constructing several multicast and directed distribution trees, one per class of service, within each multicast group. This new strategy and associated protocols are then simulated using NS-2 platform. Simulation results are analyzed and compared with other multicast routing solutions, both at intra- and interdomain levels.     

浅谈无线IP网络中的QoS规范

随着下一代网络的飞速发展,用户之间可以通过多种多样的无线设备相互联络,而这些无线设备则通过一个基于IP的核心网络所提供的无线链路相互连结的。虽然存在如IP协议之类的共同规范,但是要将许多不同的网络融合起来,而这些网络有着各自不同的QoS模型,这无疑将使端到端的QoS保证变得更加复杂。文中讨论了对端到端QoS协议进行标准化的必要性,重点研究了位于服务层的QoS规范,提出了一种通用服务规范(GSS),并对端到端提供QoS保证的服务等级进行了规范。     

Performance evaluation of constraint-based path selection algorithms

Constraint-based path selection is an invaluable part of a full-fledged quality of service (QoS) architecture. Internet service providers want to be able to select paths for QoS flows that optimize network utilization and satisfy user requirements and as such increase revenues. Unfortunately, finding a path subject to multiple constraints is known to be an NP-complete problem. Hence, accurate constraint-based path selection algorithms with a fast running time are scarce. Numerous heuristics and a few exact algorithms have been proposed. In this article we compare most of these algorithms. We focus on the restricted shortest path algorithms and multi-constrained path algorithms. The performance evaluation of these two classes of algorithms is presented based on complexity analysis and simulation results and may shed some light on the difficult task of selecting the proper algorithm for a QoS-capable network.     

QoS-aware service composition and adaptation in autonomic communication

Advents in network technology and distributed system design have propelled network communication service beyond best effort data delivery. With the rising complexity of network infrastructures and the need for on-demand provisioning operations, a high degree of self-sufficiency and automation is required in the network service infrastructure. Guided by the autonomic communication principle, this paper first presents an autonomic service provisioning framework for establishing quality-of-service (QoS)-assured end-to-end communication paths across administratively independent domains. Through graph abstraction, we show that the domain composition and adaptation problem could be reduced to the classic k-multiconstrained optimal path (MCOP) problem. In analyzing existing k-MCOP solutions, we show their inefficiencies when applied to the service provisioning context and establish a number of new domain composition and adaptation algorithms. These new algorithms are designed for the self-configuration, self-optimization, and self-adaptation of end-to-end network communications and can provide hard QoS guarantees over domains with relative QoS differentiations. Through in-depth experimentations, we compare the performance of our algorithms with classic k-MCOP solutions and demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.     

An Approach Towards Amelioration of an Efficient VM Allocation Policy in Cloud Computing Domain

Cloud computing is on the horizon of the domain of information technology over the recent few years, giving different remotely accessible services to the cloud users. The quality-of-service (QoS) maintaining of a cloud service provider is the most dominating research issue today. The QoS embraces with different issues like virtual machine (VM) allocation, optimization of response time and throughput, utilizing processing capability, load balancing etc. VM allocation policy deals with the allocation of VMs to the hosts in different datacenters. This paper highlights a new VM allocation policy that distributes the load of VMs among hosts which improves the utilization of hosts’ processing capability as well as makespan and throughput of cloud system. The experimental results are obtained by utilizing trace based simulation in CloudSim 3.0.3 and compared with existing VM allocation policies.     

Service level negotiation andcops-sls protocol

The Internet is a set of interconnected domains in which different QoS technologies can be deployed. The dynamic provision of end-to-end QoS over heterogeneousip networks assumes the negotiation of mutually acceptablesla. This paper presents the concept of intra-, inter- and multiple-domain service level negotiation using thecops-sls protocol. The negotiation process gives different parties in the negotiation the ability to agree upon the service level that a data stream can obtain, along with the permissible pricing of the service.     

A fuzzy modeling based dynamic resource allocation strategy in service grid

One of the major challenges in service grid is to guarantee the promised quality of service (QoS) for all the admitted users or applications, while maximizing the resource utilization through dynamic resource sharing. An efficient resource allocation method should ensure the service QoS and balance the load among service grid nodes which are often highly dynamic, heterogeneous and linked by wide-area network. In this paper, a new dynamic resource allocation method is presented and analyzed based on fuzzy modeling to solve the adaptation between heterogeneous applications with multiple QoS requirements and grid resource. Simulations in service grid with heterogeneous QoS requirements reveal that the proposed dynamic resource allocation method can distribute most suitable resource among the different service quickly and sensitively as the service QoS demand varies under the constraint of achieving maximum utilization of grid resources.     

Class-based quality of service over air interfaces in 4G mobilenetworks

We present a framework for quality of service provisioning over the air interfaces in future wireless networks, including 3G enhancement and 4G mobile networks. The framework is based on the paradigm of service classes, wherein each class can exhibit a characteristic behavior in terms of resource allocation over the air interface. Using this QoS framework, future wireless network operators can define their own sets of service classes, choose the preferred way of implementing the QoS behavior of these classes, and offer class-based pricing schemes. The user application can choose the service class that best suits its expectations in terms of QoS and cost of access. A class-based bandwidth scheduling scheme is described as a mechanism to implement this QoS framework over CDMA air interfaces. This scheme incorporates the paradigm of service classes, in conjunction with fair resource allocation and air interface congestion resilience, while allocating air interface bandwidth to mobile users     

A new MAC protocol for broadband wireless communications and its performance evaluation

This paper presents a new Time Division Multiple Access/Frequency Division Duplexing (TDMA/FDD) based Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for broadband wireless networks, supporting Quality of Service (QoS) for real-time multimedia applications. It also gives the Call Blocking Probability (CBP), packet end-to-end delay and utilization analysis of different service classes, as they are most essential performance criterions in broadband wireless network assessment. The Connection Admission Control (CAC) mechanism in the proposed MAC efficiently organizes the bandwidth allocation for different service classes by means of a fairness based scheduling algorithm. In addition, the simulation model of the proposed MAC scheme is realized by using OPNET Modeler network simulator. The results of the analytical calculations for the CBPs are compared to those of the simulation of the proposed MAC, thus validity of the MAC protocol is proved.     

ITU-T QoS standards for IP-based networks

To support IP/PSTN convergence, future IP networks will need to provide reliable differentiated QoS to a diverse set of user applications, including telephony. To achieve end-to-end QoS solutions, IP network providers will need to agree on a common set of IP packet transfer performance parameters and QoS objectives. This article describes two new ITU-T Recommendations, Y.1540 and Y.1541, that document such an agreement.     

MPLS网络中保证服务质量的多径路由选择策略

本文提出了一种在多协议标签交换(MPLS, Multiple Protocol Label Switching) 网络中保证服务质量 (QoS,Quality-of-Service) 的多径路由选择策略,其核心思想是引入多路径分散业务量机制,在保证用户服务质量要求的同时达到增加网络呼叫接受率和平衡网络负载的目的.文中着重讨论了用户端对端服务质量要求的多路分解和分配问题,在此基础上提出了多径路由的分支路径选择策略,并研究了策略中的关键参数K对该策略性能的影响.数值结果显示出多路径分散业务量在网络负载均衡方面的重要意义,并且表明用户的要求相对网络资源越高使用多径传输的优势越明显.     

A differentiated optical services model for WDM networks

This article addresses the issues of scalable end-to-end QoS in metropolitan DWDM networks serving as transit networks for IP access networks. DWDM offering a few wavelengths has been deployed in the past in backbone networks to upgrade point-to-point transmission where sharing is based on coarse granularity. This type of DWDM backbone network, offering a few light-paths, provides no support for QoS services traversing the network. As DWDM networks with larger numbers of wavelengths penetrate the data-centric metro environment, specific IP service requirements such as priority restoration, scalability, dynamic provisioning of capacity and routes, and support for coarse-grain QoS capabilities will have to be addressed in the optical domain in order to achieve end-to-end QoS over a DWDM network. We propose a QoS service model in the optical domain called differentiated optical services (DoS) based on a set of optical parameters that captures the quality and reliability of the optical lightpath     

Bandwidth allocation and admission control in ATM networks withservice separation

The statistical multiplexing operation within an ATM network node is considered, with respect to different methods for the allocation of the bandwidth of an outgoing link. Service separation is assumed by dividing the overall traffic flows into classes, homogeneous in terms of performance requirements and statistical characteristics. Which share the bandwidth of a link according to some specified policy. This context allows one to clearly define, by means of several existing approaches, a region in the space of connections of the different classes (call space) where quality of service (QoS) requirements at the cell level are satisfied. Within this region, some criteria for allocating the bandwidth of the link to the service classes are proposed, and the resulting allocation and call admission control (CAC) strategies are defined and analyzed. The goal of these operations is to achieve some desired QoS at the call level. Several numerical simulation results are presented, in order to highlight the different performance characteristics of the various methods     

Path selection with class distribution information in theintegrated network

In an integrated network, multiple service classes may exist with different priorities and quality-of-service (QoS) characteristics. Path selection algorithms play an essential role in supporting the QoS requirements of a session in the integrated network. However the existing path selection algorithms may allow a session of a high priority class to be preempted instead of that of the lower priority class. We analyze the mentioned problem and propose a new path selection algorithm which uses not only the amount of residual bandwidth but also the class distribution information of residual bandwidth (RB-CDI) in its path selection procedure     

A learning approach for prioritized handoff channel allocation in mobile multimedia networks

An efficient channel allocation policy that prioritizes handoffs is an indispensable ingredient in future cellular networks in order to support multimedia traffic while ensuring quality of service requirements (QoS). In this paper we study the application of a reinforcement-learning algorithm to develop an alternative channel allocation scheme in mobile cellular networks that supports multiple heterogeneous traffic classes. The proposed scheme prioritizes handoff call requests over new calls and provides differentiated services for different traffic classes with diverse characteristics and quality of service requirements. Furthermore, it is asymptotically optimal, computationally inexpensive, model-free, and can adapt to changing traffic conditions. Simulations are provided to compare the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm with other known resource-sharing policies such as complete sharing and reservation policies     

MPLS-Linux体系结构及交换路由性能分析

本文详细介绍了MPLS-Linux的体系结构、核心数据结构、标签交换过程和QoS运行等实现技术，通过对MPLS-Linux组成的交换路由系统进行性能测试和分析，发现：在链路轻载或预留带宽的情况下，交换路由系统对数据流的服务质量优于传统路由系统；只有综合应用策略路由、数据报分类调度和标签交换才能实现Internet环境下对端到端服务质量的控制。