Traffic performances improvement using DiffServ and MPLS networks

Service providers have been in the process of evaluating and evolving their multiple networks to a single converged Internet Protocol (IP)-based infrastructure upon which they will deploy existing and future services. Although many approaches have been proposed, provisioning of Quality of Service (QoS) in the IP-based networks is still a challenging task. From the evolution of QoS solutions, Differentiated Services (DiffServ) appears to become the mainstream QoS solution. Using service differentiation principle, DiffServ approach for providing QoS omits the integration with other traffic control mechanisms. Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) complements DiffServ providing mechanisms to choose and reserve resources on the best available path for a given traffic. This paper discusses the MPLS DiffServ integration to achieve QoS in IP-based networks and to illustrate its effectiveness by performing a simulation using Network Simulator (ns-2).