QoS-aware path switching for VoIP traffic using SCTP

Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) has been a prevalent multimedia service nowadays. It allows us to transmit voice data over IP networks. However, quality of service (QoS) is a major challenge to VoIP services. It must provide similar quality to traditional public switched telephone network or cellular phone services. Therefore, QoS related protocols have become important for real-time applications. Multi-protocol label switch (MPLS) is one of the important techniques to improve the network performance from QoS point of view. It employs label swapping to speed up packet forwarding. However, when a large number of users utilize VoIP services, the network congestion issue still exists. It causes delay, jitter and packet loss that affect VoIP QoS. In this paper, we propose a QoS-aware path switching strategy by using stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) in MPLS network to improve the VoIP traffic. This was done by employing SCTP selective acknowledgment mechanism to report the transmission parameters of primary path and to determine the criteria to switch to backup path. Simulation results show significant improvement in VoIP QoS.

► We propose a QoS-aware path switching scheme to improve the QoS of VoIP services.
► We employ SCTP SACK to monitor the transmission parameters of primary path.
► The QoS-aware path switching scheme determines the criteria to switch to backup path.
► We design a mathematical model to optimize the sampling interval of our system.
► We conduct analyses to elaborate the outperformance of our QoS-aware system.