| Abstract: | The successful commercial deployment of Hybrid Fibre/Coaxial (HFC) access networks in the residential market has so far been driven by demand for faster Internet access and the prospects of a host of new services based on real‐time voice and video. To sustain their growth rates and compete with alternative approaches, such as ADSL, they must be enhanced with the capability to efficiently handle quality‐intensive real‐time services. The new multi‐service paradigm mandates isolation of traffic classes, conditioning of entering traffic and preventive control in addition to traditional closed‐loop control. The differentiated services (DiffServ) architecture with its relevant traffic control tools and the bundling of behaviour aggregates is particularly suited to the H/W‐based MAC of HFC systems. It constitutes a suitable framework enabling the support of proliferating real‐time voice‐ and video‐based services while aligning the system to the emerging Internet strategy of scalable service differentiation. The implementation of such a solution in the ACTS 327AROMA research project is presented in this paper. The performance of the system is evaluated using computer simulation. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
