Cognitive Packet Network for Bilateral Asymmetric Connections

Network testbed experimentation is useful to evaluate new protocols, since it offers realism and repeatability under controllable conditions. Thus, in this paper, we make use of a software network platform, the cognitive packet network (CPN), to offer best-effort quality of service (QoS) to end users and to develop a new bilateral QoS differentiation between pairs of communicating nodes. In the proposed approach, each CPN edge or user node is a source and a destination at the same time, managing uplink user-originated traffic and downlink traffic sent back in response to the uplink. The bilateral communication is implemented with four distinct QoS objectives that can be met between sender nodes (original source or destination). Traffic volume asymmetry between the received and the sent data is used to trigger changes in QoS. The lower traffic rate requires short-delay QoS, whereas the higher traffic rate requires loss minimization. The effectiveness of the approach is evaluated by several measurements.