Quantifying the Gains of an Optimal Information Model to Facilitate Policy Based QoS in Heterogeneous Communications Networks

Considerable work has been done in the past several years to facilitate video, voice and data communications over highly variable, communications-disadvantaged links between mobile users. The first area addressed in most information model examples is often QoS in order to partition the underlying link and physical layer capabilities among the requesting higher layer services. A deployed system must manage these partitions in real time and must adjust parameters in every layer in coordination with local, regional and even global management functions. This mandates a policy-based management approach which, in turn, dictates the construction of an information model that addresses all of these parameters. This paper defines several new areas of information model parameters beyond QoS that are not typically discussed in the current policy based network management (PBNM) information model literature. We then construct an integrated information model over the several policy decision point (PDP) domains and develop some example policies that illustrate the interaction of the policy domains in a representative mobile ad-hoc network. Finally we calculate the bottleneck bandwidth for coordinated and uncoordinated policy management and estimate the operations/management savings and utilization gains possible with an information model-based implementation