A flexible communication architecture to support multimedia services in high speed network

To construct a high-speed and reliable IPv6 network that supports an information society, a high-speed router and switch architecture and new quality of service (QoS) control mechanisms have been developed. The architecture that adopts distributed hardware engines for IPv4 and IPv6 packets achieves wire-rate forwarding for 10 gigabit Ethernet. The QoS control mechanisms, by controlling hierarchical bandwidths, can guarantee the communications of important data such as mission critical data for each network user, assuring bandwidths for each user. A next generation router (GR4000) and a switch (GS4000) based on this architecture provide 320 Gbps maximum capacity with the QoS control mechanisms as well as flow filtering and flow-statistics collection.

Today, many have attempted to provide multimedia services using IP over Satellite broadband infrastructure. The traffic complexity and real-time constraints of the multimedia services pose challenges to guarantee the delivery of packets end-to-end. At present, Quality of Service (QoS) in the router’s forwarding plane provides traffic differentiation capability in the traditional terrestrial networks. Traditional networking systems that implement QoS have packet classification and dropping mechanisms in the network edge and strong shapers and schedulers in the network core. In this paper, we clearly show that adapting the traditional QoS techniques to satellite medium will not optimize multimedia and other real-time broadband services. We also propose a new QoS architecture that provides a mechanism to optimize multimedia services over expanded broadband offering. In addition, we clearly establish in this paper using simulation results, that the proposed architecture is necessary to provide service guarantees for multimedia traffic over expanded broadband satellite networks. The results provided in the paper demonstrate that the proposed architecture has lower delay and jitter and higher packet delivery ratio compared to no QoS or partial QoS implementations.

This paper studies QoS (quality of service) management functions that are needed in 3/sup rd/ generation packet data networks. The current architecture of the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) is described. The UMTS QoS architecture and QoS model are presented with important QoS parameters. The QoS management functionality is analysed against the presented QoS architecture and QoS model. The paper presents the functionality that needs to be implemented, to UMTS packet data networks, to be able to provide QoS for end-users. The paper concludes with the description of functions and their locations to be able to provide QoS efficiently in UMTS.

The rapid evolution of Grid Computing and the development of new middleware services make Grid platforms increasingly used not only for best effort scientific jobs but also in industrial and business applications. This has taken to the growing demand of Quality of Service (QoS) support. However, the QoS issue on Grid is quite difficult, as Grid has been originally designed without any QoS support, and it is a complex system. During the previous years some solutions have been proposed to supply QoS for specific classes of applications. This results in a focused and a heterogeneous approach, so that it is hard to evaluate its sufficiency and its robustness with respect to the large spectrum of possible Grid applications. In this context, our contribution concerns three points: first, we analyze the current approach to QoS on Grid as a relationship among QoS features, applications, and architectures; second, we evaluate the QoS requirements of two recent QoS‐demanding applications on Grid, namely Massive Multiplayer Online Games and Urgent Computing, comparing these requirements with the support provided by current QoS architectures; and third, we propose an alternative approach to QoS provision on Grid based on the definition of a dedicated QoS‐management layer to overcome the limitations of the current methodologies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The ITU-T defined next generation network (NGN) architecture designates the resource admission control function to perform the application-driven Quality of Service (QoS) control across access and core networks. The Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching (GMPLS) was introduced by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to cope with new traffic engineering challenges in fast optical networks and provide them with reliable end-to-end QoS mechanisms. However, an actual Connection Admission Control (CAC) implementation inside the resource reservation protocol - traffic engineering extension (RSVP-TE) in GMPLS networks does not provide the ability of effective decision making, since the applied threshold CAC lacks of the capability to consider QoS policies on GMPLS network nodes. This prevents an effective end-to-end QoS control in a fully dynamic, application driven Label Switched Path (LSP) setup scenario. This work presents a specific implementation of fuzzy-CAC operating over an RSVP-TE agent in GMPLS network domain. This fuzzy-CAC implementation is applied to a testbed where a client application requests a real-time data transfer through a GMPLS network, which results in dynamic LSP setup and exclusion. The admission control is performed upon service request based on QoS class requirements and network resource availability. The differentiated traffic treatment on per-flow basis is realized through employment of IF-THEN rule based expert knowledge. Effective traffic differentiation is achieved in a multi-service network scenario and thus it validates fuzzy-CAC as candidate for RSVP-TE protocol enhancement for application driven QoS provisioning in GMPLS networks.

As new computer network technologies emerge, the application designers and the application users expect an increasing level of quality of service from them. Hence, it is a common practice in the newer technologies to more Quality of Service (QoS) components. Until now, these QoS solutions have been both network-technology specific and network-oriented solutions. In this thesis, we present an application-oriented approach to design a high quality network which is independent of the underlying communication technology. In this thesis, we propose a QoS architecture to provide predictable performance to the end-to-end application users in a high quality networking environment. In our architecture, QUANTA (Quality of Service Architecture for Native TCP/IP over ATM networks), we integrate different application requirements and different existing native QoS architectures into a single end-to-end architecture. Through experimentation we identify the architectural issues and the different QoS components required. We propose solutions which include isolation of the applications and managing the knowledge of the applications. The issue of isolating an application is subdivided into classification and identification of the applications. In addressing these issues we propose a ripple-through classification mechanism and a Generic Soft State (GSS) identification mechanism. To manage the knowledge of the applications we propose different QoS components, such as a GSS negotiation mechanism, a GSS communication mechanism and a GSS monitoring mechanism (such as GSS Relays and GSS Agents). QUANTA's overhead is measured by running applications with different life-times and QoS requirements with and without QUANTA. For a transaction-oriented applications, the overhead induced by using QUANTA is larger than the benefit of using QUANTA. In high data rate applications and in long life time applications, a predictable performance to the applications is achieved with very low overhead by QUANTA. We demonstrate that QUANTA can manage and maintain Quality of Service for different classes of applications under varying host and network load conditions transparent to the application user. Using QUANTA, we can reach nearly 80% of the channel utilization under loaded conditions, whereas without QUANTA, the load on the network can reduce the channel utilization to 40%. Quanta has reduced a 350 msec delay under loaded conditions to less than a 10 msec delay. With the exception of short transition periods, QUANTA can sustain throughput to within the bounds of the specification of the user. We identify the limitations of QUANTA as currently proposed and discuss possible enhancements to it and other such architectures to remedy these limitations.

To facilitate the Quality of Service (QoS) interoperability, a multi-plane end-to-end (E2E) QoS architecture reference model has been developed. This modelprovides a network-functional-plane-based QoS architecture and defines different interfaces for composing a coherent data transfer and management. In this model, QoS functions are categorized into Data Plane, Control Plane, and Management Plane. However, a lack of sufficient network resource hinders the support for such sophisticated network architecture. A major mitigation approach is to implement an optical/Radio Frequency (RF) hybrid system. This paper proposes a resource management scheme for an optical/RF hybrid system and looks into the realization of multi-planes model in this hybrid system that supports an acceptable QoS level.

In communication systems there are two "worlds" at the moment: Internet and ATM. Both possess Quality of Service (QoS) architectures which shall allow them to integrate services of data and telecommunications formerly performed by separate infrastructures. We believe that none of them will be able to oust the other. That means both will exist for at least the middle-term future. Therefore, an interaction between both appears to be necessary, especially in the field of distributed multimedia applications where both worlds "meet" first. In order to perform gracefully, distributed multimedia applications require a certain QoS provision, in particular from the communication system. Thus, for such applications the existence of heterogeneous IP/ATM networks makes the interaction between Internet and ATM QoS architectures an important issue. In this article a taxonomy of interaction models for the Internet and ATM QoS architectures is developed. We do not let our view be restricted by existing approaches for the interaction between ATM and Internet. Instead we will derive more unconventional models by regarding the possible communication patterns based on different topological variants for heterogeneous IP/ATM networks. The investigation is driven by applications' communication requirements. This is accomplished by examining possibly interacting applications and their communication patterns. The interaction models are contrasted and compared to each other and their assumptions and implications are shown. The derived taxonomy of models allows us to classify proposed approaches for the interaction of Internet and ATM QoS architectures. Thereby we are able to identify the basic assumptions of these approaches and their corresponding restrictions.

Performing QoS (Quality of Service) control in large computing systems requires an on line metric that is representative of the real state of the system. The Tardiness Quantile Metric (TQM) introduced earlier allows control of QoS by measuring efficiently how close to the specified QoS the system is, assuming specific distributions. In this paper we generalize this idea and propose the Generalized Tardiness Quantile Metric (GTQM). By using an online convergent sequential process, defined from a Markov chain, we derive quantile estimations that do not depend on the shape of the workload probability distribution. We then use GTQM to keep QoS controlled in a fine grain manner, saving energy in soft real-time web clusters. To evaluate the new metric, we show practical results in a real web cluster running Linux, Apache, and MySQL, with our QoS control and for both a deterministic workload and an e-commerce workload. The results show that the GTQM method has excellent workload prediction capabilities, which immediately translates in more accurate QoS control, allowing for slower speeds and larger energy savings than the state-of-the-art in soft real-time web cluster systems.

Scalable Quality of Service (QoS) control is of paramount importance to effectively enable a seamless convergence of the rapidly evolving Peer-to-Peer (P2P) overlay communications over the Internet since the latter only supports best-effort service paradigm. For example, the European Union (EU) funded ROMEO project is focusing on a joint use of DVB-T2 and P2P overlay networks for live multimedia content sharing and collaboration among multiple users. This raises a strong need that the media packets transmitted through the P2P overlay delivery system must arrive earlier enough at the end users to assure a proper synchronization of the multiple views that may be received via the hybrid network. For this purpose, the P2P network must assure a certain QoS guarantee in terms of bandwidth, delay, jitter, and loss. More importantly, the control must be scalable to prevent excessive signalling and the related processing overhead, usually suffered in the traditional per-flow QoS control approaches. In this view, recent research effort claimed that the Internet resources can be efficiently over-provisioned (booking more resources in-advance) in such a way to allow differentiation of QoS control with reduced signalling overhead and increased resource utilization. This approach, however, needs further investigations for proper integration into innovative networking architectural designs to achieve performance. In addition to that, and in order to provide an end-to-end QoS, a mechanism to enforce prioritization policies within the customer’s access network is also needed. Hence, this chapter proposes a cross-layer control architecture that takes advantage of the Internet resources over-provisioning and the QoS policy enforcement within access networks to facilitate rapid development of P2P applications. The design aims to alleviate the requirements of buffers and the need for adaptation on end users’ devices, thus allowing for cost-effective and rapid development of attractive services in similar hybrid content delivery networks.

The coupling of signaling protocols for mobility management and resource reservation plays an important role to achieve Quality-of-Service (QoS) in wireless environments. When performing a handover, request and allocation of resources have to be done in the shortest possible time to avoid disruptions for the user service. Therefore, it is preferable to ensure resource availability in advance, which we call anticipated handover. This approach for providing seamless handovers in turn poses challenges for the overall design of the QoS architecture and its associated QoS signaling protocol. This article describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a comprehensive QoS architecture and a suitable QoS signaling protocol. It discusses intrinsic problems of reservations in IP based networks such as session ownership as well as a number of protocol design issues regarding the integration of QoS signaling with other protocols, such as Mobile IP. In particular, we define an end-to-end QoS architecture and a mobility-aware reservation signaling protocol Mobility Aware Reservation Signaling Protocol (MARSP) that supports anticipated handover, thus enabling seamless services over heterogeneous wireless access networks. The presented architecture and protocol were implemented and evaluated by measurements. They show that anticipated handovers not only outperform hard handovers regarding handover latency, but that they also provide functional and robustness advantages.

Future force networks such as FCS and WIN-T are anticipated to support a wide spectrum of applications with stringent and diverse quality of service (QoS) constraints. While many QoS control mechanisms are being designed, judicious multi-metric QoS route selection mechanisms are often put forth as a key means to help provide QoS assurances. QoS routing based on multiple metrics can potentially provide paths that simultaneously trade off multiple, diverse and conflicting performance requirements. This paper describes the incorporation of flexible and scalable QoS path selection heuristics into a network engineering design analytic toolset (NEDAT). NEDAT is equipped with performance metrics for evaluating the tradeoffs and effectiveness of QoS routing subject to the characteristics of network environments of interest. Using NEDAT we show networks: (a) where QoS routing is very beneficial and (b) where benefits are so small that it in not worth the added computational and bandwidth costs.

QNoC: QoS architecture and design process for network on chip

Over the past several years there has been a considerable amount of research within the field of quality-of-service (QoS) support for distributed multimedia systems. To date, most of the work has been within the context of individual architectural layers such as the distributed system platform, operating system, transport subsystem and network layers. Much less progress has been made in addressing the issue of overall end-to-end support for multimedia communications. In recognition of this, a number of research teams have proposed the development of QoS architectures which incorporate QoS-configurable interfaces and QoS driven control and management mechanisms across all architectural layers. This paper examines the state-of-the-art in the development of QoS architectures. The approach taken is to present QoS terminology and a generalized QoS framework for understanding and discussing QoS in the context of distributed multimedia systems. Following this, we evaluate a number of QoS architectures that have emerged in the literature.

Background. The introduction of fifth-generation (5G) networks creates new opportunities for fast and continuous data exchange, but there are still some problems with the quality of voice services in such networks. With the rapid development of technology and the further spread of 5G, there is a need to understand the impact of key aspects of 5G on voice quality. This requires research that can systematically analyse the features of 5G networks that affect the quality of voice services. Objective. Identification of ways to improve the quality of voice services in 5G networks. Assessment of key indicators of voice service quality in 5G networks. Determination of the best option for the gradual transition to the Standalone mode and the use of VoNR technology in the fifth generation networks. Methods. Analysis of factors affecting the quality of voice services in fifth-generation networks. Analysis of well-known publications on the implementation of 5G networks. Comparison of the implementation of Non-Standalone and Standalone modes in the 5G network. Testing of the modern EVS codec, which provides an opportunity to improve the customer experience. Results. Confirmation that 5G networks can significantly improve the quality of voice services compared to previous mobile communication technologies such as 4G and 3G. Certain factors that may affect the quality of voice services and require additional attention when planning and deploying 5G networks are identified. The optimal steps for the transition to the Standalone mode and the use of VoNR technology in fifth-generation networks are determined. The main differences in the QoS architecture between LTE and 5G are identified, and the purpose of DRB flows for separating traffic types and services is established. Conclusions. It has been confirmed that 5G networks can significantly improve the quality of voice services compared to previous technologies such as 4G and 3G. This is possible due to the broadband capabilities of 5G networks, improved data transmission, low latency, the use of an advanced EVS codec and reduced response time. However, certain factors, such as network coverage, optimisation level and traffic characteristics, can affect the quality of voice services and require additional attention when planning and deploying 5G networks. The QoS management architecture consists of QoS flows, which allow separating packet assignment to flows (managed by the CN) from the assignment of DRB flows (managed by the RAN). As 5G networks are being rolled out gradually, it is important to properly integrate the 5G domain into the existing telecoms provider's network. The transition from Non-Standalone to Dual connectivity is a necessary step for the implementation of VoNR technology in Standalone mode. Using the modern EVS codec allows not only improving the customer experience, but also introducing new voice services.