A measurement-based approach for dynamic QoS adaptation in DiffServ networks

This paper presents a practical approach to managing multimedia traffic in DiffServ network, using network monitoring feedback and control. We exploit the flexibility of multimedia traffic and process network level parameters to adapt the traffic according to the current state of the network. The latter is determined based on reports sent by bandwidth monitors installed on each node of a DiffServ Domain. The bandwidth monitors interact with a policy server which, depending on the network state, decides the policy(ies) that should be enforced by the DiffServ network. The implementation of the selected policies typically leads to accepting, remarking, or dropping the multimedia traffic entering the network. Multimedia streams may be assigned different levels of QoS, as interpreted by the marker at the DiffServ edge router and marked according to network state. To achieve such dynamic QoS adaptation for multimedia applications, we have implemented and evaluated a policy-based management system. Performance evaluation shows that multimedia applications adapt better to network conditions using our approach.