QoS in IntServ-based IP networks: the peak rate policing

Abstract

In the last few years, IP has moved towards resource reservation, with the task to guarantee in the future Quality of Service (QoS). This has led to flow admission control algorithms based on the negotiation of standardised traffic parameters. QoS can be guaranteed in any network, a priori from the used technology, only if the used admission control algorithm wisely shares the network's resources among the users. Any admission control algorithm on its turn can do so, only if every user respects the negotiated traffic parameters. Since any user could, maliciously or not, send at a higher rate than negotiated, i.e. use a higher share of resources than the negotiated one, in every network in which admission control is performed, a policing algorithm is used. An ideal policer should guarantee to reject no packet of a well-behaved user and police contract violation as rigidly as possible. All this independently of the characteristics of the monitored stream and of the background traffic. This holds also for Integrated Services (IS) based IP networks. In these networks, every user negotiates a peak and an average rate. In this paper we present the solution to the peak rate policing issue. We adapt the Generic Cell Rate Algorithm (GCRA), well-known policer used in ATM networks, to police the peak rate of flows of packets with variable length. We intuitively call this modified GCRA Generic Packet Rate Algorithm (GPRA) and dimension its parameters so that independently of the characteristics of the policed flow and of the background traffic, no packets of a well-behaved user are rejected and that the flows of any misbehaving user are rigidly policed. Copyright © 2003 AEI.