Generation IP Networks Research Articles

A New Framework Architecture for Next Generation e-Health Services

The challenge for fast and low-cost deployment of ubiquitous personalized e-Health services has prompted us to propose a new framework architecture for such services. We have studied the operational features and the environment of e-Health services and we led to a framework structure that extends the ETSI/Parlay architecture, which is used for the deployment of standardized services over the next generation IP networks. We expanded the ETSI/Parlay architecture with new service capability features as well as sensor, profiling and security mechanisms. The proposed framework assists the seamless integration, within the e-Health service structure, of diverse facilities provided by both the underlying communication and computing infrastructure as well as the patient's bio and context sensor networks. Finally, we demonstrate the deployment of a tele-monitoring service in smart home environment based on the proposed framework architecture.

High-speed, in-band performance measurement instrumentation for next generation IP networks

Facilitating always-on instrumentation of Internet traffic for the purposes of performance measurement is crucial in order to enable accountability of resource usage and automated network control, management and optimisation. This has proven infeasible to date due to the lack of native measurement mechanisms that can form an integral part of the network’s main forwarding operation. However, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) specification enables the efficient encoding and processing of optional per-packet information as a native part of the network layer, and this constitutes a strong reason for IPv6 to be adopted as the ubiquitous next generation Internet transport. In this paper we present a very high-speed hardware implementation of in-line measurement, a truly native traffic instrumentation mechanism for the next generation Internet, which facilitates performance measurement of the actual data-carrying traffic at small timescales between two points in the network. This system is designed to operate as part of the routers’ fast path and to incur an absolutely minimal impact on the network operation even while instrumenting traffic between the edges of very high capacity links. Our results show that the implementation can be easily accommodated by current FPGA technology, and real Internet traffic traces verify that the overhead incurred by instrumenting every packet over a 10 Gb/s operational backbone link carrying a typical workload is indeed negligible.

Adaptive Bandwidth Allocation in Broadband Networks

MPLS and DiffServ have been widely accepted as the service model to adopt for providing Quality of Services (QoS) over next generation IP networks. The combination of MPLS and DiffServ presents a very attractive strategy to broadband network providers. Bandwidth Allocation mechanism in DiffServ guaranties to meet the QoS requirements for all types of services. The objectives of this paper are to simulate and estimate the efficiency of Maximum Allocation with Reservation (MAR) method in small network cases. Problem statement of MAR is enhanced with bandwidth utilization variables. Simulation results illustrate the efficiency of traffic predictors and MAR in small network cases. Ill. 3, bibl. 8 (in English; summaries in English, Russian and Lithuanian).

Hybrid routing in next generation IP networks

This paper presents a hybrid approach for routing flows in IP networks to achieve an optimal network configuration maximising bandwidth usage (optimality), minimising re-routing upon failure (reliability) and reducing the signalling overheads resulting from a full IP tunnelling (scalability). We formulate the routing of flows in IP networks as a service differentiated model where the IP flows are classified into high bandwidth demanding (HBD) and low bandwidth demanding (LBD) flows at the ingress of the network and handled differently into the core using a hybrid IGP+MPLS approach where the LBD flows are routed over the existing IGP paths while the HBD flows are carried over MPLS bandwidth-guaranteed tunnels. This model can be deployed in heterogenous network environments where HBD flows carrying real-time traffic and LBD flows transporting best-effort traffic are handled differently over a common transport network implementing traffic prioritization in response to natural or man-made emergencies. We consider the routing of flows within an IP domain's boundaries and evaluate the efficiency of the new routing approach under uniform and bursty traffic profiles. We apply the routing approach to compute paths for the traffic offered to a 20- and 50-node test networks. Simulation reveals that the hybrid routing approach outperforms both IGP and MPLS routing under the network conditions and test network models considered.

Definition and Performance Evaluation of Network Services Deployed Over a Differentiated Services Network

A vital requirement for next generation IP networks is the provision of services with differentiated behavior and characteristics. The basic reason for that is the need to provide Quality of Service (QoS) to the different types of user traffic produced by applications that are different in nature and behavior, analogously to the IP network services. The Differentiated Services (DiffServ) paradigm is still one of the major outcomes of the research community toward the provision of QoS to individual customer needs and applications. This paper addresses the definition and deployment of specific network services in a DiffServ environment. We reuse and extend the fundamental concepts of the Expedited Forwarding and Assured Forwarding per hop behaviors in order to define four new network services, apart from the well known Best Effort one, which introduce a specific traffic handling implementation along with an Admission Control methodology. These are analyzed and simulated in the paper in order to evaluate their performance and confirm the correctness of their fundamental principles.

Experimental TCP Performance Evaluation on Diffserv AF PHBs over ATM SBR Service

In these days, IP network customers become sensitive to the QoS guarantee provided by the network. Amongst many QoS guarantee schemes, Diffserv (Differentiated Services) is the one of the most practical candidates for the next generation IP networks. Under these circumstances, the commercial network venders have already provided the Diffserv routers that support EF (Expedited Forwarding) PHB (Per Hop Behavior). However, AF (Assured Forwarding) PHB in Diffserv still has not been provided by commercial routers. Therefore, it is a realistic solution that SBR3 (Statistical Bit Rate 3) of ATM emulates AF PHB, but it is not clear whether TCP traffic over AF PHB emulated by ATM is differentiated from the best effort TCP traffic over DF (Default Forwarding) PHB. To confirm the differentiation, we have experimentally studied TCP performance through the link into which TCP connections over AF PHB and DF PHB are aggregated. This paper describes the experimental results and discusses the possibility of the TCP performance differentiation between AF PHB and DF PHB over ATM.

Fast IP routing lookups for high performance routers

The key to the success of the next generation IP networks to provide good services relies on the deployment of high performance routers to do fast IP routing lookups. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for fast IP lookups using a so-called two-trie structure. The two-trie structure provides the advantages in that less memory space is required for representing a routing table than the standard trie while it still provides fast IP lookups. Based on the simulation result, the memory space can be saved around 27% over the standard trie while a lookup operation takes 1.6 memory accesses in the average case and 8 memory accesses in the worst case. Also, the structure is not based on any assumptions about the distribution of the prefix lengths in routing tables. Thus, increasing the lengths from 32 to 128 bit (from IPv4 to IPv6) does not affect the main structure.