QoS signaling across heterogeneous wired/wireless networks: resource management in DiffServ using the NSIS protocol suite

Reservation-based quality of service (QoS) in a mixed wireless and wireline environment requires an end-to-end signaling protocol that is capable of adapting to the idiosyncrasies of the different networks. The QoS NSIS signaling protocol (QoS-NSLP) has been created by the Next Steps In Signaling working group at the IETF to fulfill this need for an adaptive reservation protocol. It allows reservation requests to be interpreted by equipment implementing different QoS models along the path between a data sender and a data receiver. This paper describes the QoS-NSLP, and an example of a particular QoS model that is based on resource management in DiffServ (RMD). RMD provides a scalable dynamic resource management method for DiffServ networks. RMD has two basic functions to control the traffic load in a DiffServ domain: it provides admission control for flows entering the network and it has an algorithm that terminates the required amount of flows in case of congestion caused by failures (e.g. link or router) within a DiffServ domain. The admission control within the domain can be either measurement - or reservation-based. The basic signaling mechanism is described for different signaling scenarios and the expected performance of the protocol is discussed.