Recursive layering of Forwarding on Gates and Traffic Engineering Middleware for Ethernet

Quality of Service (QoS) for inter-networks requires a two-tier approach to separate the end-to-end communication from the QoS provisioning within each autonomous system. However, the interaction between both is not standardized. Furthermore, the solutions for both tiers lack either scalability, flexibility, or QoS guarantees. Our paper presents a combination of “Forwarding on Gates” (FoG) as inter-network and “Traffic Engineering Middleware for Ethernet” (TEME) as intra-network techniques. This combination incorporating a recursive layer model separates the layers based on their scope and not on their functionality. This paper proposes a single interface used by all layers. Furthermore, the same interface is used by applications in order to signal their QoS requirements. This design allows supporting QoS in a more consistent way as compared to the ISO/OSI layer model. The paper outlines the proposal theoretically and demonstrates the advantages with an example.