Olivier Dugeon

EuQoS: End-to-End Quality of Service over Heterogeneous Networks

The EuQoS (End-to-End QoS over Heterogeneous Networks) IST Integrated European Project aimed to define a Next Generation Network architecture that builds, uses and manages end-to-end QoS across different administrative domains and heterogeneous networks (UMTS, xDSL, Ethernet, WiFi, Satellite and IP/ MPLS). The EuQoS architecture preserves the openness and the decentralized decision model of the actual Internet, runs on off-the-shelf hardware and network equipment, and allows end users to request various services without changing the Application Signaling protocol, while meeting regulators’ and users’ Net Neutrality requirements. This paper presents the key elements of the EuQoS architecture and describes the main results obtained in field trials performed on a fully-functional EuQoS system prototype developed over a pan-European testbed. Furthermore, the paper discusses the main strengths of the system and the issues related to its actually deployment on a large scale, from both technical and market points

End to End Quality of Service over Heterogeneous Networks EuQoS

In this paper, the EuQoS Consortium offers its first architecture release in order to provide an initial view on how end to end QoS is provided over multiple and heterogeneous networks. The EuQoS end to end Architecture has two views; a network deployment view across a number of autonomous systems (AS) domains and a software view within an AS. It was funded on a division of the end to end QoS paradigm along a vertical axis - Service, Control and Transport plane — and an horizontal axis — network division between the various technology especially Core and Access networks. The solution is based on the concept of end to end path build, used and managed by three processes: Provisioning, Invocation and Operating Maintenance (OAM).

Extended UPnP multimedia content delivery with an HTTP proxy

Nowadays, multimedia content sharing between home networks becomes a great field of interest for both customers and service providers. Many solutions have been proposed already but they suffer from as well a lack of confidentiality and security, as the constraint to store content in dedicated servers provided by the service operator. In this paper we describe a new approach solving those drawbacks and permitting to share multimedia contents between UPnP terminals connected to different home networks. The service guarantees the user the control over his contents, since the latter remain stored within the home network. The remote access experience offers thereby a strong level of confidentiality, authentication and security. Our novel solution is based on a combination of entities – an HTTP proxies located in the core network, a UPnP Reverse Proxy at the edge of the home network, and a Content Control Point inside the home network. Users, in our service, access from any UPnP terminal to a remote content through the core networks HTTP proxy – a trusted entity in charge of user authentication and authorization. Namely, this HTTP proxy controls the users right to access a particular remote home network. The UPnP Reverse Proxy filters and presents the shared contents based on the identification made by the HTTP proxy. In turn, the Content Control Point (CCP), in the home network, manages the users right to access a particular content of that home network.

Accelerated Signalling for the Internet over ATM (ASIA)

To face up the rapid development of Internet services with even more growing needs in terms of quality of service and bandwidth, we introduce in this paper an accelerated signalling capability for the ATM network. As a preliminary, we draw attention to the fact that cell spacing can regulate the dynamics of TCP over ATM if the spacing period is adequately chosen. Then, we propose to associate with each Internet information flow (generated by TCP or UDP) a Deterministic Bit Rate (DBR) virtual channel connection within the ATM network. The cell spacing mechanism actually makes the cell stream of an Internet information flow compliant with a DBR connection, for which quality of service objectives in terms of negligible cell loss and bounded cell transfer delays can be guaranteed. To achieve this, we study a synchronization method between the two connection establishment procedures, namely that at the Internet protocol level and the signalling procedure for the ATM network. The ATM connection is established throughout the network via a light-weight signalling procedure, which relies on the exchange of single cell messages consisting of Resource Management (RM) cells. The addressing system proposed for this accelerated signalling capability is that of classical IP, which is and will certainly be the predominant one in the near future.

Provisioning QoS in Inter-domain Traffic Engineering

This work describes an architectural framework that allows inter-domain Traffic Engineering Label Switched Paths (TE-LSPs) with guaranteed quality of service (QoS) to be setup. Such TE-LSPs, called EQ-links, are setup by coordinating path computation elements (PCEs) of neighboring autonomous systems (ASs) along a pre-determined inter-AS path, computed through cooperative interaction between pairs of neighboring ASs. After defining the architectural requirements for the framework, we describe and analyze the Inter-AS Path Computation Protocol (IA-PCP), which computes an interdomain path at the AS level, i.e., selecting a sequence of ASs to the destination, based on a loose source routing approach. The results of the IA-PCP computations are then fed to the PCEs for complete path computation. The proposed architecture has been actually implemented within the testbed of the EuQoS project, which is aimed at enabling end-to-end QoS in the Internet. We report results related to the setup time of EQ-links, measured in the pan-European testbed of the EuQoS project, showing that path computation and setup takes an affordable time overhead.

A Novel Bandwidth Broker Architecture Based on Topology Aggregation in Delay|Bandwidth Sensitive Networks

Either in flow-based or class-based QoS architectures, controlling the admission of traffic entering the network becomes a crucial task in the new telecom services. The Bandwidth Broker BB architecture is one of the efficient admission control solutions. In this paper, we present a novel bandwidth broker architecture for scalable support of guaranteed services based on the concept of topology aggregation. Indeed, the bandwidth broker does not manage all the detailed information, about topology and reservation, stored in the admission control database. Instead, it uses an aggregated representation in order to decide if a new service request can be accepted or rejected. We demonstrate that the reduction of the amount of information managed by the bandwidth broker enhance the performance of the admission control function thereby increasing the overall call processing capability.

A mesh aggregation scheme for call admission control

The continuously growing research to establish the quality of service (QoS) enabled multi-service network architecture has identified several essential mechanisms, among which call admission control (CAC) is assuredly one of the most important ones. This mechanism is responsible for keeping the number of ongoing sessions at the appropriate level in the network to meet the QoS requirements. Due to high call admission request rates, often being the case in core networks, it is essential to study and develop fast and scalable admission control functions. In this paper, we propose a new call admission control scheme based on topology aggregation. We use simulations to evaluate the performance of this scheme versus a traditional parameter-based admission control model. The results show that our CAC scheme achieves very good performances in terms of accuracy and scalability.

Advanced secure multimedia services for digital homes

Our society is becoming increasingly more IT-oriented, and the images and sounds that reflect our daily life are being stored mainly in a digital form. This digital personal life can be part of the home multimedia contents, and users demand access and possibly share these contents (such as photographs, videos, and music) in an ubiquitous way: from any location and with any device. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, we introduce the Feel@Home system, whose main objective is to enable the previously mentioned vision of an ubiquitous digital personal life. Second, we describe the security architecture of Feel@Home, analyzing the security and privacy requirements that identify which threats and vulnerabilities must be considered, and deriving the security building blocks that can be used to protect both IMS-based and VPN-based solutions.

The EuQoS System

The European research project “End-to-End Quality-of-Service support over heterogeneous networks” (EuQoS) defined a novel architecture that builds, uses and manages the end-to-end (e2e) application exchanges and network paths with Quality-of-Service (QoS) guarantees across different administrative domains and heterogeneous networks. This chapter presents the architecture of the EuQoS system as a case study of the concepts introduced in previous chapters. The EuQoS architecture provides a clear interface that allows the end user to request a specific QoS level, without changing its application signalling protocol and using the basic connectivity of the local service provider. A complete set of supporting functions was implemented: (i) Security, Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting (SAAA); (ii) Admission Control; (iii) Charging; (iv) Signalling and Service Negotiation; (v) Monitoring and Measurements Functions and System (MMF/MMS); (vi) QoS Routing (QoSR); (vii) Failure Management; and (viii) Traffic Engineering and Resource Optimisation (TERO). The EuQoS system was deployed as a prototype including all the above features, encompassing the most common access networks, i.e., xDSL, UMTS, WiFi and Ethernet, connected through a core network composed by the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) of the project partners and GEANT (the European research network). This section describes the main features of the EuQoS system and presents the mechanisms, algorithms and protocols that were developed in the project. The results achieved validate the design choices of the EuQoS system, and confirm the potential impact that this project is likely to have in the near future.

Lightweight signaling in ATM networks for high quality transfer of Internet traffic

Abstract To keep up with the rapid development of Internet services and in the face of increasing needs for quality of service (QoS) and bandwidth guarantees, we consider an accelerated signaling capability for the ATM network in order to offer QoS to Internet applications. Focusing on those applications relying on the transmission control protocol (TCP), we propose to emphasise the connection oriented characteristics of TCP by associating an ATM virtual channel (VC) connection with each TCP connection requesting QoS. Specifically we study a synchronisation method between the connection establishment procedure at the TCP level and the signaling procedure within the ATM network. The latter is described as lightweight because it relies on the exchange of single-cell messages consisting of resource management (RM) cells. Finally, we examine how this proposal could be integrated into the multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) approach developed by the IETF.