Flow management for QoS-controlled ‘data connectivity’ provisioning

The paper describes a management-oriented model for cost-effective ‘data connectivity’ provisioning between the peer entities of a networked multimedia application. The service provider (SP) may employ policy functions to map the application-prescribed flow specs onto the resource needs of connections carrying data flows. The model allows dynamic switching from one policy function to another, based on a notion of cost associated with the infrastructure resource usage, namely, the network bandwidth, for a given level of connectivity provisioning. Our strategy is to reduce the per-flow cost incurred by multiplexing many closely similar data flows on a single connection. The multiplexing brings in two benefits to the SP, without compromising the QoS needs of applications. First, it reduces the per-flow resource allocation due to the gains accrued from a statistical sharing of connection resources. Second, it amortizes the connection-level overhead across many flows. The level of cost reduction, and hence the revenue accrual, can be controlled by the SP using a range of policy functions that take into account the burstiness and loss/delay tolerance of data flows. The paper describes the functional mechanisms and signaling structures to realize our model of connectivity services. We have conducted studies of different types QoS-controlled data connections based on traffic measurements and simulation analysis to validate the model. The model can be easily incorporated into the TMN and DCOM frameworks that have been standardized for network service offerings.