Providing end-to-end QoS for multimedia applications in converged wired/wireless networks

Summary form only given. Telecommunications industry is facing two dominant trends. First, broadband access in the form of cable, fiber to home and WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) is providing a high-bandwidth pipe to people´s home and to small-medium businesses. Second, there is a fundamental shift from circuit-switched networks to packet-switched networks. The implication of broadband access is an opportunity for providing richer multimedia applications and services. Applications such as multimedia streaming require high bandwidth; whereas applications such as voice over IP (VoIP), push-to-talk (PTT), online gaming require low delay/jitter; yet applications like video conferencing require both high bandwidth and low delay/jitter. QoS, therefore, means low latency, low delay/jitter, low loss, adequate bandwidth and above all, good end-user experience. However, all the metrics do not necessarily apply to all applications and hence it´s a challenge for the service provider to build an infrastructure that can provide end-to-end QoS for applications with variety of QoS needs. The second trend towards converged networks and services implies the need for a unified service architecture that is independent of the access network. The unified service architecture needs a SIP-based signaling and control infrastructure to support QoS-control on a per-user (or per-class-of-users) and per-application or (per-class-of-applications) basis. While basic mechanisms are provided by IETF protocols, a carrier grade implementation of such QoS control requires a more robust and systematic design of the service infrastructure. Unified signaling plane for QoS control is not enough to guarantee QoS of multimedia services. There needs to be equivalent carrier-grade support for the bearer plane as well. DiffServ-aware MPLS traffic engineering is fulfilling that need. The talk addresses the above issues and describes how service providers are building carrier-grade networks to support quality of service- in converged access-agnostic networks. There is a special focus on 3G wireless access.