Service traffic management system for multiservice IP networks: lessons learned and applications

Next-generation networks offer new opportunities and challenges to Internet service providers as well as providers of other online services. Service providers can now deploy new services over an IP network infrastructure without building their own networks. In an open network environment, the network resources of ISPs should be fairly open to third parties that plan to launch their own services over the network. To actively respond to the changing network paradigm, it is essential to measure the traffic of individual services, and to estimate their cost for cost accounting between service provider and ISP. However, current traffic measurement techniques only provide the total traffic volume in links, without reporting the operator whose services flow through the links. Some commercial products can classify traffic into each application at a specific spot, but we should install monitoring systems at every spot throughout the entire network in order to observe which service traffic flows in every link. To satisfy the requirements of the NGN environment, we developed the Service Traffic Management System that can analyze the traffic of individual services based on user log data. STMS can report not only the traffic of individual services in every link, but also user behavior for each service. In addition, this article shares our experience of STMS development. We also introduce how we utilize STMS in IP network design, and discuss business and management support.