Louise Burness

The BRAIN quality of service architecture for adaptable services with mobility support

Next generation IP networks and applications will have to address the increasingly important challenges of wireless access, mobility management, the provision of quality of service (QoS), and multimedia issues. These problems form the basis of the research within the EU financed BRAIN (Broadband Radio Access for IP based Networks) project. The project is developing a novel architecture that will be able to deal with the extreme QoS violations that are likely to occur during a running session that is exposed to the radio access environment. The core of this architecture supports different types of applications. It inherits and develops from the traditional Internet approach, but incorporates aspects of a modern flexible QoS middleware solution. The given problem is addressed in a comprehensive, modular, and open manner, by providing different APIs to different types of applications. It provides powerful functions to application programmers, but does not assume that lower level functionality must be hidden from the application programmer. It encompasses a variety of objects, APIs, end-system mechanisms and protocols to cope with the dynamic variation in mobility management and QoS. This solution will provide applications with more predictable services and allow applications to react in a pre-determined way to QoS violations.

Provision of QoS in heterogeneous wireless IP access networks

The Internet protocol is being deployed at an ever-increasing pace to offer connectivity to support a wide range of applications. Current research is targeting mobile hosts, and numerous research projects are considering the technologies needed to support the nomadic user. The IST BRAIN and MIND projects have studied the problems using a top-down approach, from user requirements through the application layer all the way to link layer specific issues. This paper presents the results of the study of quality of service provision at the IP layer, to offer service differentiation to application data flows, even over wireless networks.

Access and Path Selection in Ambient Networks

As the choice of wireless network technologies increases and different wireless network technologies are connected together the bottleneck of a path will not necessarily be the first access link. Instead a link further upstream could be the bottleneck. This paper introduces a novel generalisation of access selection which takes properties beyond the first hop into consideration for the selection of path for communication. The motivation for design choices and the algorithms involved in the access and path selection are explained. In addition, a use case is included to describe the solution and illustrate its benefits.

Examining a key topic in the ASCOT project address management in moving hotspots

In this paper we provide an overview of the ASCOT project and present intermediate results on investigations concerning address management. ASCOT considers managed vehicular networks, i.e. moving networks attached to public transport vehicles that provide network connectivity to its passengers. We briefly describe how ASCOT positions itself among other projects and activities that focus on moving network aspects. We consider addressing: the pros and cons of the various options for the addressing of end user terminals - including a brief discussion of the relevant end user requirements and the impact on mobility management.

A pragmatic comparison of locator ID split solutions for routing system scalability

There are a multitude of different locator/ID split proposals aiming to tackle the problem of routing system scalability. However, with no large scale implementations, there is a lack of understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the different solutions. Here, we divide current proposals into two broad categories and consider the likely generic behaviour of each category compared to a set of requirements. These include the need to motivate specific system providers to upgrade the system in order to solve the wider problem of system scalability. From this, we see each class has different strengths and weaknesses.

Efficient alternatives to bi-directional tunnelling for moving networks

The following paper discusses ways to provide reachability to devices residing within a moving network. A device is reachable when an external node can successfully contact it. In this paper we introduce two novel solutions to support reachability in moving networks – one based on a proxy signalling agent and the other on the use of temporary names. We analyse aspects of these proposals compared to existing solutions, namely the bi-directional tunnelling solution proposed within the IETF’s NEMO (Network Mobility) working group.

IP QoS and mobility experimentations within the MIND trial workpackage

In addition to conceptual work, the IST MIND project aims to verify practically a set of concepts related to the use of broadband, multimedia services by mobile users in an IP network. This paper presents an overview of the trials, and focuses on a few particular topics that are dedicated to the experimentation of adaptive applications within a wireless IP access network, including advanced QoS and mobility protocols. The novelty of the experimentation is underlined, and first results are presented.