An MPLS-based architecture for scalable QoS and traffic engineering in converged multiservice mobile IP networks

Abstract

Mobile Internet connectivity is the fastest growing business in the telecommunications market because of the evolution of digital cellular, portable computing and personal communication technologies, and is playing a vital role in shaping the 21st century communications paradigms. In this scenario, the deployment of innovative wireless data networks, the integration with the Internet and the interworking between different wireless technologies, typically 2.5/3G cellular and Wireless LAN (WLAN), will be challenging objectives for competitive service providers. These factors, combined with the impact that mobile-related traffic may have on the fixed infrastructure, and the convergence of mobile and fixed services, drive towards a rationalization of the resource allocation and management procedures and make it urgent to address quality of service and traffic engineering for mobile data communications at the core transport level. The Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology is a versatile solution to address the above problems which delivers a unified control mechanism with connectionless multiprotocol capabilities, running over mixed media infrastructures, and defining evolutionary signalling mechanisms to support both quality of service (QoS) and traffic engineering to allow fine control of traffic flows in the network. The purpose of this paper is to show how MPLS technology can be employed to address all the required functions of tomorrow’s converged wireless/wired networks, from initial IP-level authentication and session control to sophisticated resource reservation, traffic distribution, quality of service and policy management.