A distributed resource controller for QoS applications

The relationship between the user perceived Quality of Experience (QoE) with Internet applications and the Quality of Service (QoS) of the underlying network and applications is complex. Unveiling statistical relations between QoE and QoS can boost the prediction and diagnosis of QoE. In this paper, we shed light on the relationship between QoE and QoS for a popular application: YouTube video streaming. We conducted a controlled study where we asked users to rate their perceived quality of YouTube videos under different network conditions. During this experiments, we also captured network QoS and application QoS. We then analyze the resulting dataset with SES, a feature selection algorithm that identifies multiple, minimal-size, statistically-equivalent signatures with maximal predictive power for a target variable (e.g., QoE). We found that we can build optimal QoE predictors using a minimal signature of only three features from application or network QoS metrics compared to four when we consider features from both layers.

The growing emergence of a variety of network applications have stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements which cannot be always met by the best-effort Internet. To provide QoS, several QoS frameworks have been explored over last two decades, but none of them has been truly successful and globally implemented. This paper proposes QOF, a novel QoS framework based on the OpenFlow. It uses the superior control capabilities of OpenFlow network to transmit business having QoS requirements. On receiving QoS requirements of an application, QOF employs network status information provided by the measurement system (bandwidth, delay, packet loss), then uses QoS routing algorithm implemented by path computation module to guarantee QoS. Finally, QOF is simulated and verified, simulation results show that QOF can find a path satisfying QoS requirements of application according to network status information, and can improve resource usage.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a new efficiently idea of programmable networks that separates the control plane from data plane of all network devices. Internet service provider is responsible for all the control decisions and communication among the forwarding elements from centralized controller. SDN provides the various optimized services. Quality of service (QoS) routing is a path computation method that is suitable for the different traffics generated by several applications, while utilization of network resources has increased. This agreement of service is defined by QoS requirements such as throughput, delay, jitter and packet loss etc. Multimedia applications often require assured from multi QoS constrained, causing the NP-complete problem which cannot be simply solved in polynomial time and high management complexity in the transition network. SDN is able to reduce complexity and it is used to efficiently implement traffic, hence SDN significantly values to development QoS routing. In this paper, we propose QoS routing algorithm called Quantized Level Balance (QLB) for SDN that considers one or many QoS parameters relating to the network application. To satisfy the requirements, QLB selects QoS parameters depending to the level of appropriate application service quality. We have replicated our algorithm on simulate topology with Scalable Video-streaming Evaluation Framework (SVEF). We measure the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of Scalable Video Coding (SVC) at the receiver. Our propose algorithm is improved than single-metric approach that may choose poor QoS parameter paths.

The IEEE 802.11n supports high data rate transmissions due its physical layer Multiple Input ‎Multiple Output (MIMO) advanced antenna system and MAC layer enhancement features (frame ‎aggregation and block acknowledgement). As a result this standard is very suitable for multimedia ‎services through its Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA). This paper focuses on ‎evaluating the Quality of Service (QoS) application on the performance of the IEEE 802.11n ‎random topology WLAN. Three different number of nodes (3, 9 and 18) random topology with one ‎access point are modeled and simulated by using the Riverbed OPNET 17.5 Modular to ‎investigate the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) performance for different spatial streams. ‎The result clarified the impact of QoS application and showed that its effect is best at the 18 node ‎number topology. For a 4x4 MIMO, when QoS is applied and with respect to the no QoS ‎application case, simulation results show a maximum improvement of 86.4%, 33.9%, 52.2% and ‎‎68.9% for throughput, delay, data drop and retransmission attempts, respectively. ‎

Software-defined IoT (SDIoT) is a promising approach to address the requirements of the Internet of Things (IoT), such as network management, Quality of Service (QoS), and resource utilization. The advantages of SDIoT are facilitated by the separation of the data- and the control-planes using <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">flow-rules</i> , that allow fine-grained control over individual flows. However, the number of flow-rules that can be placed at the switches is limited, leading to scalability issues in SDIoT. Existing approaches to flow-rule management either do not consider the impact on QoS or are applicable only to a particular topology. In this article, we propose a QoS-aware flow-rule aggregation scheme for generic network topologies, which aims to achieve a satisfactory tradeoff among flow-rule compression and its impact on the QoS of IoT traffic flows. Specifically, the proposed scheme adaptively aggregates flow-rules while considering different QoS requirements of IoT applications in the network, and the flow-rule capacity of the switches. The proposed scheme consists of the following components—1) a path selection heuristic to increase the total number of flow-rules that can be accommodated in the network and 2) a multiarm bandit-based flow-rule aggregation scheme capable of reducing the number of flow-rules, while maintaining adequate performance in terms of QoS. Experimental results using IoT traffic show that, on average, the proposed scheme is capable of reducing the average end-to-end delay and QoS-violated flows in the network by 22% and 30%, respectively, compared to the state-of-the-art schemes.

The idea behind the proposition of Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) for modern and future systems on chip capitalizes on the fact that busses do not scale well when shared by a large number of cores. Even if NoC research is a relatively young field, the literature abounds with propositions of NoC architectures. Several of these propositions claim providing quality of service (QoS) guarantees, which is essential for real time and multimedia applications. The most widespread approach to attain some degree of QoS guarantee relies on a two-step process. The first step is to characterize application performance through traffic modeling and simulation. The second step consists in tuning a given network template to achieve some degree of QoS guarantee. These QoS targeted NoC templates usually provide specialized structures to allow either the creation of connections (circuit switching) or the assignment of priorities to connectionless flows. It is possible to identify three drawbacks in this two-step process approach. First, it is not possible to guarantee QoS for new applications expected to run on the system, if those are defined after the network design phase. Second, even with end-to-end delay guarantees, connectionless approaches may introduce jitter. Third, to model traffic precisely for a complex application is a very hard task. If this problem is tackled by oversimplifying the modeling phase, errors may arise, leading to NoC parameterization that is poorly adapted to achieve the required QoS. This Chapter has two main objectives. The first one is to evaluate the area-performance trade-off and the limitations of circuit switching and priority scheduling to meet QoS. This evaluation will show where such implementations are really suited for QoS, and when more elaborate mechanisms to meet QoS are needed. The second objective comprises proposing a method, called rate-based scheduling, to approach QoS requirements considering the execution time state of the NoC. The evaluation of circuit switching and priority scheduling show that: (i) circuit switching can guarantee QoS only to a small number of flows; the technique do not scale well, and can potentially waste significant bandwidth; (ii) priority-based approaches may display best-effort behavior and, in worst-case situations, may lead to unacceptable latency for low priority flows, besides being subject to jitter. In face of these limitations, rate-based scheduling arises as an option to improve the performance of QoS flows when varying traffic scenarios are used.

The recent evolution of wireless networking has led the market to increased service demands. Thus, the emerged necessity is to develop specialized mechanisms that provide efficient QoS (Quality of Service) for both traditional and modern network applications in the challenging wireless environment. The respective IEEE proposal comes from the 802.11e workgroup which has developed the Hybrid Coordination Function (HCF). HCF is definitely capable of providing QoS, however, it exhibits significant limitations. This work presents an alternative protocol with improved behavior and performance. The Priority Oriented Hybrid Access (POHA) is a complete channel access mechanism able to provide integrated QoS for all types of traffic and network applications. POHA combines a polling based and a TDMA access scheme, adapts to the dynamic conditions of modern WLANs, improves channel utilization and station feedback, provides medium contention fairness, eliminates collisions, differentiates traffic based on priorities, supports dynamic resource assignment, and instantly negotiates the quality levels of the offered traffic streams trying to support multiple streams with best possible quality. POHA, compared with HCF, exhibits generally superior performance.

Adaptive quality management schemes in Voice over IP (VoIP) Network have a constructive impact on the improvement of voice quality level received by end-users. These schemes are used for persistent monitoring of quality level leading to better management of network services. In this paper, a model is introduced to improve the voice quality level and optimize resource utilization. In the proposed model, the VoIP network makes the decision for configuration adaptively and modifies itself by means of Hidden Markov Model (HMM). Depending on the quality level and consumed bandwidth evaluated in the receiver side this adaptive self-modification takes place. During this procedure, acceptable weights for Quality and Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, namely, End-to-End Delay, Packet Loss, and Jitter are determined. These acquired weights help HMM model predict next optimum state properly. Another important objective of this work is to find a relation between Quality of Experience (in terms of Mean Opinion Score) and Quality of Service (in terms of End-to-End Delay and Jitter) parameters. This mapping provides a tangible understanding of how QoS parameters affect MOS. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed technique lessens the impact of jitter and packet loss on voice quality level.

Energy saving and quality of service (QoS) support are two important issues of Long-Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) wireless networks. Unfortunately, achieving high energy saving efficiency often implies degradation of QoS support. In this paper, we address the issue of QoS support under Discontinuous Reception (DRX), the power saving mechanism of LTE-A. Different from previous studies which analyzed average packet delay under DRX mechanism, we adopt packet loss ratio due to violation of delay bound as QoS requirements of real-time applications. The problem of QoS support under DRX mechanism is defined as an optimization problem to maximize average power saving under the constraint that the packet loss ratio is no greater than a pre-determined threshold. We derive packet loss ratio and energy saving efficiency given DRX parameter values and propose an approach to select appropriate DRX parameter values. Simulations are conducted to verify our analysis. We found that the analytical results match well with simulations. Moreover, the energy saving efficiency achieved by the selected DRX parameter values is very close to that of the optimum solution.

In this paper we introduce a novel MAC protocol that provides Quality of Service (QoS) support for multimedia traffic in UWB-based wireless local area networks. The proposed protocol allocates transmission opportunities to QoS and best effort traffic using a set of scheduling and resource control algorithms. The algorithms account for the UWB characteristics such as the co-existence of multiple simultaneous transmissions as well as the possibility of dynamically assigning the nodes' transmission rate and power. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol can provide QoS support while optimizing resource utilization.

Analysis and adaptive optimization of vehicular safety message communications at intersections

Network slicing is a technology that virtualizes a single infrastructure into multiple logical networks (called slices) where resources or virtualized functions can be flexibly configured by demands of applications to satisfy their quality of service (QoS) requirements. Generally, to provide the guaranteed QoS in applications, resources of slices are isolated. In wired networks, this resource isolation is enabled by allocating dedicated data bandwidths to slices. However, in wireless networks, resource isolation may be challenging because the interference between links affects the actual bandwidths of slices and degrades their QoS. In this paper, we propose a slice management scheme that mitigates the interference imposed on each slice according to their priorities by determining routes of flows with a different routing policy. Traffic flows in the slice with the highest priority are routed into shortest paths. In each lower-priority slice, the routing of traffic flows is conducted while minimizing a weighted summation of interference to other slices. Since higher-priority slices have higher interference weights, they receive lower interference from other slices. As a result, the QoS of slices is differentiated according to their priorities while the interference imposed on slices is reduced. We compared the proposed slice management scheme with a naïve slice management (NSM) method that differentiates QoS among slices by priority queuing. We conducted some simulations and the simulation results show that our proposed management scheme not only differentiates the QoS of slices according to their priorities but also enhances the average throughput and delay performance of slices remarkably compared to that of the NSM method. The simulations were conducted in grid network topologies with 16 and 100 nodes and a random network topology with 200 nodes. Simulation results indicate that the proposed slice management increased the average throughput of slices up to 6%, 13%, and 7% and reduced the average delay of slices up to 14%, 15%, and 11% in comparison with the NSM method.

To provide mobile users with seamless wireless access and guaranteed quality of service (QoS) anywhere and anytime, it is a trend to integrate CDMA cellular networks and wireless local area networks (WLANs) into heterogeneous networks in next generation all-IP wireless networks. Network selection and QoS support for different services are two of the major challenges in integrated CDMA cellular/WLAN networks. In this paper, a net utility-based network selection scheme was proposed, which takes into account the network resource, QoS requirements of applications, user mobility, and vertical handoff. The goal of the proposed scheme is to guide users to select the most suitable access network, where the users' QoS requirements can be satisfied and the cost that user paid for is the lowest. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed network selection scheme in integrated CDMA cellular/WLAN networks.

Ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) and efficient load balancing in cloud communication networks is critical for optimizing resource allocation, minimizing latency, and enhancing service reliability. Traditional load balancing strategies often fail to scale and adapt to dynamic cloud environments, resulting in network congestion, resource underutilization, and increased operational costs. This study presents a novel Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based hyperheuristic optimization framework integrated with a mathematical model for QoS-aware load balancing, designed to address the challenges of scalability and efficiency. The model is referred to as GAHO\textsubscript{QoS}. We introduce valid inequalities to strengthen the optimization formulation, accelerating convergence and improving solution quality. Our GA-hyperheuristic framework dynamically selects and combines multiple low-level heuristics to optimize task allocation across cloud servers while adhering to QoS constraints such as latency, throughput, and energy efficiency. Experimental evaluations on a range of cloud communication scenarios demonstrate that GAHO\textsubscript{QoS} significantly reduces service latency, balances workload distribution, and optimizes resource utilization. Comparative analysis with existing metaheuristic methods, including $GA-PSO$ and $SA-GA$, confirms that the proposed framework outperforms traditional approaches in terms of computational efficiency, scalability, and QoS satisfaction. GAHO\textsubscript{QoS} provides an adaptable, computationally efficient solution for enhancing cloud network performance, contributing to the development of high-performance, energy-efficient, and robust cloud infrastructures.

Recent advances in information and communication technology resulted in increased use of multimedia applications. Multimedia transmission over Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs) with high Quality of Service (QoS) is a challenging task due to mobility of the nodes. The problems associated with multimedia transmission are loss of packets or frames and delay in receiving the packets at destination. To maintain the QoS, all the multimedia applications need that packets should be delivered in sequence and order, and delay should be within the tolerable limits. Existing works mainly uses packet loss information at source station to determine whether the transmission window size should be increased or decreased In existing approaches, the source station takes decision about increasing or decreasing window size based on reception of Acknowledgement/ non-reception of Acknowledgement. The magnitude of increment/decrement in window size is predefined but not as per actual scenario in the network. This leads to poor utilization of resources. Since multimedia applications are loss-tolerant, it is important to compute the packet loss accurately as the QoS requirements for multimedia services accepts the loss of packets up to some threshold. In this paper, we model the active stations as a Poisson random process and computed the packet loss, idle period and busy period at the front end of route. This packet loss estimation is useful for precise specification of buffer size resulting in improved QoS. Our experimental results demonstrate the usefulness in designing optimal control in order to improve QoS for multimedia applications in MANETs.