An architecture for internet inter-domain interconnections and bandwidth trading towards effective NGN deployment

Service convergence, digitization of the content and packet based information transport, in addition to economies of scale, rapid and flexible service delivery, reduction of capital and operating costs, changes in telecom policy and regulation, and ever increasing competition have been key factors in the evolution of Next Generation Networks (NGN). Telecom service providers worldwide are migrating their legacy networks towards, or deploying new next generation networks to meet the market and competitive demands. The IP-centric converged next generation networks aim to provide a multitude of services over a single integrated network infrastructure, rather than multiple segmented and overlay networks as have existed before. It is also expected that the legacy network will co-exist with next generation networks in the foreseeable future. However, the deployment of next generation networks has brought its unique challenges for network managers and planners, as network has to be planned in a cost effective way without over or under building network resources. Moreover, as the next generation networks is a single converged network, the traffic load in one domain of the network has major impact in other domains and overall network as well. This paper addresses the challenges related to the planning of the next generation networks and a reference architecture enabling integrated end-to-end planning of next generation network covering multitude of domains and layers.

Based on a convergence of network technologies, the Next Generation Network (NGN) is being deployed to carry high quality video and voice data. In fact, the convergence of network technologies has been driven by the converging needs of end-users. The perceived end-to-end quality is becoming one of the main goals required by users that must be guaranteed by the network operators and the Internet Service Providers, through manufacturer equipment. This is referred to as the notion of Quality of Experience (QoE) and is becoming commonly used to represent user perception. The QoE is not a technical metric, but rather a concept consisting of all elements of a user's perception of the network services. In this talk, we focus on the idea of how to integrate the QoE into a control- command chain in order to construct an adaptive network system. More precisely, in the context of Content-Oriented Networks that is used to redesign the current Internet architecture to accommodate content-oriented applications and services, the talk aim to describe an end-to-end QoE model applied to a Content Distribution Network architecture and see relationships between Quality of service and Quality of Experience.

Network Slicing (NS) technique is comprehensively reshaping the next-generation communication networks (e.g. 5G, 6G). Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) predominantly control the flow of service functions on NS to incorporate versatile applications as per user demands. In the virtualized-Software Defined Networking vSDN environment, a chain of well-defined virtual network functions (VNFs) are installed on Service Function Chains (SFCs) by multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs) concurrently. Generation, allocation, re-allocation, release and destroying associative VNFs on SFC is an extremely difficult task while keeping high selection accuracy. Towards solving this fundamental issue, in this work, we have proposed a multi-layered SFC formation for adaptive VNF allocation on dynamic slices. We have formulated an ILP to address the VNF-EAP (VNF-Embedding and Allocation Problem) over real network topology (AT&T Topology). Leveraging machine learning techniques we have shown an intelligent VNF selection mechanism to optimize resource utilization. The performance evaluation shows remarkable efficiency on ML-driven dynamic VNF selections over static allocations on SFCs by halving resource usage. Further, we have also studied a VNF typecasting technique for service backup on outage slices in the field of disaster management activities.

The next generation network (NGN) is envisaged as being an IP-based network which supports a wide variety of applications in an increasingly converged fixed-mobile environment. This paper looks at the key standards which are available as enablers to the building and operating of an NGN that delivers appropriate levels of quality of service for end-user applications. The paper starts by looking at a general framework for quality of service (QoS) standards, including the necessary terminology to distinguish between the performance of the network and the requirements of applications. It goes on to look at the key standards that address the application requirements, the performance of the IP layer and the behaviour of its bearer. In addition the paper discusses several concepts designed to allow the control of QoS levels in IP-based networks. Although it also discusses published standards, there is much ongoing standardisation activity in the technical areas of QoS and network performance that is outside the scope of this paper.

Content delivery networks (CDNs) deliver Web content to end-users from a large distributed platform of Web servers hosted in data centers belonging to thousands of Internet service providers (ISPs) around the world. The bandwidth cost incurred by a CDN is the sum of the amounts it pays each ISP for routing traffic from its servers located in that ISP out to end-users. A large enterprise may also contract with multiple ISPs to provide redundant Internet access for its origin infrastructure using technologies such as multihoming and mirroring, thereby incurring a significant bandwidth cost across multiple ISPs. This paper initiates the formal study of bandwidth cost minimization in the context of a large enterprise or a CDN, a problem area that is both algorithmically rich and practically very important. First, we model different types of contracts that are used in practice by ISPs to charge for bandwidth usage, including average, maximum, and 95th-percentile contracts. Then, we devise an optimal offline algorithm that routes traffic to achieve the minimum bandwidth cost, when the network contracts charge either on a maximum or on an average basis. Next, we devise a deterministic (resp., randomized) online algorithm that achieves cost that is within a factor of 2 (resp., e/(e - 1)) of the optimal offline cost for maximum and average contracts. In addition, we prove that our online algorithms achieve the best possible competitive ratios in both the deterministic and the randomized cases. An interesting theoretical contribution of this work is that we show intriguing connections between the online bandwidth optimization problem and the seemingly-unrelated but well-studied ski rental problem where similar optimal competitive ratios are known to hold. Finally, we consider extensions for contracts with a committed amount of spend (CIRs) and contracts that charge on a 95th-percentile basis

Implementation of Next Generation Networks (NGN) is well underway in developed countries. Focus is now on how to address issues like Quality of Service (QOS) control. This however has not been the case in countries with emerging economies which are still struggling to provide basic internet and telephone services. Broadband wireless networks present affordable communications solutions for such economies. In this paper we present a prototype NGN implementation based on Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) technology, Linux routers, an open-source IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network and open-source content servers. Link quality tests show that such an implementation is capable of providing NGN services to larger community sectors. In conclusion we recommend the use of a higher throughput subscriber unit for IPTV services and incorporation of IMS capabilities in the access and core networks to achieve QoS control through resource-based admission control lacking in the WiMax access network

An internet service provider (ISP) tries to maximize profit by choosing an appropriate price for an offered service. In this paper, a system of two identical ISPs is considered. When ISPs independently choose a price to charge to maximize profit and each ISP repeatedly tries to improve profit by changing the price till no further improvements are possible, they may reach an equilibrium called the Nash equilibrium. Another strategy is that one ISP announces an appropriate price in advance and the other ISP chooses the best response strategy. This leads to Stackelberg competition. Both these strategies are compared in the paper. In this paper, it is assumed that few clients have access to multiple ISPs by using multi-SIM handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets. The clients who have access to multiple-ISPs choose an appropriate ISP for service based on the price of the service. The clients who have access to only one ISP, have no choice but to take service from the ISP. Simulations show that the ISP who announces an appropriate price in advance is likely to do better as compared to the ISP who decides the price later after observing the price of the announcer. Simulations also show that announcing an appropriate price in advance is better instead of independently deciding the price which may lead to a Nash equilibrium in terms of profit of the ISPs and quality of service provided to the clients.

The next generation network (NGN) must provide mobility and multiple interfaces to enable the seamless delivery of packets, in IP mobility environments, with the best possible quality of service (QoS) guarantee. This paper proposes an efficient resource reservation and QoS provisioning mechanism based on mobile SCTP (mSCTP) with network mobility and multi-homing for NGN. To do this, the proposed mechanism does not refresh the reserved resources on the common path through the path management at the time of mSCTP-based handover. The path management is accomplished by maintaining the common path and common routers on the path. To show the validity of the proposed mechanisms, the ns-2 simulator was used, it can provide the end-to-end seamless QoS and resources management in IP mobility environments more efficiently.

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Multihoming has been broadly employed by large enterprises, and stub networks to augment the availability and reliability of their Internet access. In this technique, the edge network is connected to the Internet through multiple upstream Internet Service Providers (ISPs) rather than one. Thus far, different aspects of multihomed networks have received intensive attention in the research community. However, there have been quite a few works on the selection methodologies of upstream ISPs for a multihomed network which is definitely a primary prerequisite for other challenges in this area. In this paper, we try to address the ISP selection problem for provisioning of survivable end-to-end connections in multihomed networks. We first argue about different design decisions that the network operator has to make for support of resiliency against single-link network failures. Then, the minimum ISP selection problem is defined in which the goal is to pick the minimum number of upstream ISPs such that by multihoming to them, the major connections of the network would achieve a satisfactory level of resiliency against link failures. Then, we propose a brute-force method to optimally unravel this problem. Despite the NP-hardness of our problem, we show that the proposed method can be used in practice to solve the problem in tolerable manner.

ICT 기술의 발전으로 인해 IPTV, 인터넷 전화 등 다양한 서비스가 인터넷 기반으로 제공되고, 이러한 서비스가 다수의 사업자 망을 통해 전달되고 있다. 본 연구는 이러한 네트워크 환경에서 서비스의 품질에 가장 많은 영향을 미치고 이용자의 주관적 품질 판단에 결정적인 역할을 하는 종단간 인터넷 서비스 품질 평가에 관해 국제 표준을 기반으로 국내 실정에 적합한 평가 방안을 제시한다. 이 결과, 시간지연, 지연변이, 패킷 손실률이 품질 평가 지표로 선정되었으며 인터넷 서비스 제공자들 간에 정보 공유를 최소화하면서 이를 예측할 수 있는 방안을 전통적인 통계방법을 사용하여 제시한다.

Current networks are evolving to NGN (Next Generation Network) which supports guaranteed quality of broadband multimedia services that are integrated with communication, broadcast and the Internet. In NGN environment should enable various services which are requiring high-level quality of service like real-time services to be provided seamlessly even though users use many kinds of communication networks and terminals. This paper proposes not only a solution for a problem that a user network's bandwidth is so insufficient that all services cannot be supported, but also a mechanism that tries to improve services efficiency for the user network over NGN by designing the user bandwidth control function, named UBCF (User Bandwidth Control Function).

QoS(Quality of Service) is defined as collective effect of performance which determines the degree of satisfaction of a user of the service by ITU-T Rec. E.800. While the use of VoIP(Voice Over Internet Protocol) has been widely implemented, persistent problems with QoS are a very important sue which needs to be solved. This research is finding the assignment of VoIP QoS to deduct how to manage the control system and presenting the QoS control process and framework under NGN(Next Generation Network) environment. The trial framework is the modeling of the QoS measurement metrics, instrument, equipment, method of measurement, the series of cycle & the methodology about analysis of the result of measurement. This research underlines that the vulnerability of the VoIP protocol in relation to its QoS can be guaranteed when the product quality and management are controlled and measured systematically. Especially it`s very important time to maintain the research about VoIP QoS measurement and control because the big conversion of new network technology paradigm is now spreading. In addition, when the proposed method is applied, it can reduce an overall delay and can contribute to improved quality, in relation to signal, voice processing, filtering more effectively.

The services in the Next Generation Network (NGN) will be created on demand by the customers and will require end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) for each flow. A very significant component for the end-to-end QoS support in the Internet is the packet schedulers in the routers. The complexity of the packet scheduling algorithms increases with the number of flows. As a solution, flow aggregation decreases the number of flows processed by the scheduler. The previous work in the literature proves that if the flow aggregator is fair, the end-to-end delay bounds of the aggregated flows are preserved and suggests limiting the service rate for the aggregate flow to achieve fairness in the expense of a lower utilization of the network resources. In this paper, we present a new method for flow aggregation, which relaxes this limit on the aggregate service rate, to increase the link utilization. We analytically show that our aggregation method is fair. Consequently, the end-to-end delay bounds in the network are preserved. In addition, we provide simulation results to demonstrate the decreased average delay of the aggregated flow.

Technological Innovation and Quality Improvement in U.S. Broadband