Dealing with Quality of Service in Hybrid Wired-Wireless Networks

The Quality of Service (QoS) research investigations in Wired and Wireless networks have been conducted mostly in isolation [2]. Recently, a need for an end to end quality of service over hybrid networks (containing wired and wireless segments) has become evident. IEEE 802.11e work group has set up the standards for wireless network quality of service which became part of the comprehensive approved 802.11 wireless networks standards late 2006. The most recent version of IEEE 802.11 standard states that there is plenty of room for improvement and development in the area of integrating QoS in wireless and wired networks. On the other hand, Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) is widely accepted to be the complex of all QoS technologies on wired networks. It ensures, to a great extent, the quality of any given connection on the network. Some researches have been done to extend RSVP to wireless networks. Moreover, RSVP-TE is an extension of RSVP that allows the establishing of MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) LSPs (Label Switching Paths) in the network. MPLS is a newer technology that offers service integration, layer 2 switching and connection orientedness, that allows traffic engineering controlled flows in the network. MPLS is a technology that delivers a unified control mechanism with its multiprotocol capabilities for running over mixed media infrastructures. MPLS defines signaling mechanisms to support both Class of Service (CoS) and QoS. In this paper we are investigating how the MPLS hierarchical architecture for label-switched networks can be used for supporting wireless users. This architecture involves requirements at the mobile terminal for initiating or hopping label switched paths at the air interface, and allowing end to end interconnection to the backbone network. We are utilizing aspects of the 802.11 QoS standards and techniques proposed in recent research to propose a technique to extend RSVP-TE into the WLANs (aka Wi-Fi) domain using MPLS.