In this paper we introduce the concepts of Network Planes and Parallel Internets, with the objective of designing and implementing a lightweight solution for viable end-to-end QoS provisioning. The proposed solution can be deployed with very small incremental additions to the existing best-effort Internet. Through Network Plane engineering and interconnection, mainly by means of intra- and inter-domain routing differentiation, end-to-end service differentiation across the Internet can be achieved.

IP Differentiated Services is widely seen as the framework to provide quality of service (QoS) in the Internet in a scalable fashion. However many issues have still not been fully addressed, such as: the way per-hop behaviours can be combined to provide end-to-end services; the specification of admission control and resource reservation mechanisms; and the role of management plane functionality and its integration with the control and data planes. This paper presents the service management aspects of an integrated control and management architecture for supporting end-to-end QoS-based IP services in next generation networks. It introduces a two-phased approach for service negotiation, namely, service subscription followed by service invocation, and describes the interworking between service and resource management based on the concept of a resource provisioning cycle.

We consider the problem of allocating bandwidth between two endpoints of a backbone network so that no parts of the network are unnecessarily loaded. We formulate the problem as lexicographic optimization and develop algorithms for its solution. The solution consists of: (1) identifying a cut in the network where the optimal load can be determined on all the links of the cut and (2) considering the same problem for each of the subnetworks to which the cut is dividing the original network.

As the Internet evolves, a key consideration is support for services with guaranteed quality of service (QoS). The proposed differentiated services (DiffServ) framework, which supports aggregate traffic classes, is seen as the key technology to achieve this. DiffServ currently concentrates on control/data plane mechanisms to support QoS but also recognises the need for management plane aspects through the bandwidth broker (BB). In this paper we propose a model and architectural framework for supporting end-to-end QoS in the Internet through a combination of both management and control/data plane aspects. Within the network we consider control mechanisms for traffic engineering (TE) based both on explicitly routed paths and on pure node-by-node layer 3 routing. Management aspects include customer interfacing for service level specification (SLS) negotiation, network dimensioning, traffic forecasting and dynamic resource and routing management. All these are policy-driven in order to allow for the specification of high-level management directives. Many of the functional blocks of our architectural model are also features of BBs, the main difference being that a BB is seen as driven purely by customer requests whereas, in our approach, TE functions are continually aiming at optimising the network configuration and its performance. As such, we substantiate the notion of the BB and propose an integrated management and control architecture that will allow providers to offer both qualitative and quantitative QoS-based services while optimising the use of underlying network resources.

We consider the problem of allocating bandwidth between two endpoints of a backbone network so that no parts of the network are unnecessarily loaded. We formulate the problem as lexicographic optimization, and develop algorithms for its solution. The solution consists of (a) identifying a cut in the network where the optimal load can be determined on all the links of the cut, and (b) considering the same problem in each of the subnetworks to which the cut is dividing the original network.

This paper proposes a hierarchical approach to the routing issue in ATM-based broadband multi-service networks. We show how distributed route selection algorithms embedded within network nodes may be managed by a TMN system, by virtue of a management service called load balancing, to increase their adaptivity to network wide conditions and therefore their effectiveness. The paper elaborates on the issues involved, presents specific algorithms and a TMN-compliant management architecture. The proposed management service influences the routing decisions by conveying network-wide information and contributes to the network load balancing by directing the routing algorithms to route traffic to the least congested network areas. Results regarding the effect of the proposed management system on the network operation are also presented.