Enforcing Effective Rates for Packet-Level QoS Control in IP Networks: Theory and Validation Based on Real Traffic Data

Abstract

This paper presents experimental results aiming at underpinning a traffic engineering framework for traffic control and resource management in IP-based networks, which has significant theoretical qualities. Initially, the paper reviews the major components of a packet level traffic control framework: (a) a general traffic shaping algorithm for effective rate enforcement (b) mechanisms for aggregating, splitting and policing streams shaped with this algorithm, and (c) a calculus for quantitative end-to-end QoS. Following the illustration of the theoretical concepts the paper focuses on aspects pertaining to the applicability of the framework. Specifically, we study the impact of the shaping delay and we provide insight into the issue of enforcing effective rates to traffic streams. These studies take into account results from simulating the shaping algorithm, which are based on analyzing, processing and simulating real traffic traces collected from an HTTP server. Moreover, traffic modeling conclusions related to the proposed shaping algorithm, are derived and presented.