NIMA (Network Impact Modeling and Analysis): A QoS Perspective

The mammoth Internet traffic growth puts a significant load on Internet Service Provider's (ISP) network capacity which impacts a wide range of network Quality of Service (QoS) metrics such as latency, jitter, throughput, packet loss, link utilization, load balancing, and service availability. From the ISP's perspective, understanding the possible impact of the future Internet traffic on its network QoS is critical for provisioning their network capacity in a cost-effective manner while meeting Service Level Agreement (SLA) between an operator and its customers. To achieve the above goal, one needs a mechanism that is capable of taking input from the projected future traffic, assign the forecasted traffic over the end-to-end network, and then analyses the impact on the network's QoS status. In this paper, we developed a novel network planning framework, namely Network Impact Modeling and Analysis (NIMA) that uses novel methods and techniques to alert ISP's network capacity planners on the: (a) links that are subject to high-risk in terms of congestion; (b) impact on latency, jitter, packet loss, and throughput; (c) impact on load balancing; and finally suggests an optimal routing strategy that can improve the overall network health. For simulation purposes, we used Mininet in combination with a floodlight controller for implementation. The experiments are performed on different sized mesh topologies to test the effectiveness of our proposed framework.