Using event simulation to evaluate Internet Protocol enhancements for special services

Disasters can cause extraordinary service demand by the public, while concurrently causing outages that reduce network capacity to serve the surging demand. It is imperative that services supporting disaster response management perform with minimal degradation during such events. Mechanisms exist within Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks to provide preferential treatment for services such as voice and video using Differentiated Services Code Points (DSCP) in the packet headers and Per Hop Behaviors in the routers. However, there is currently no way to identify voice and video packets supporting response management and to ensure their timely delivery during network overload periods. We have applied simulation to evaluate the benefit of additional DSCP markings to be applied to such voice and video packets, and several router configurations. The results demonstrate significant value of the additions in preserving disaster response management performance even when aberration in demand causes ordinary voice and video performance to degrade.