NSIS Working Group
Internet Draft M. Brunner (Editor)
Document: draft-ietf-nsis-req-01.txt NEC
Expires: October 2002 April 2002
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols
<draft-ietf-nsis-req-01.txt>
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance
with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents
at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as
reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
Informational [Page 1]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
Abstract
This document defines requirements for signaling QoS across
different network environments. To achieve wide applicability of the
requirements, the starting point is a diverse set of scenarios/use
cases concerning various types of networks and application
interactions. We also provide an outline structure for the problem,
including QoS related terminology. Taken with the scenarios, this
allows us to focus more precisely on which parts of the overall QoS
problem needs to be solved. We present the assumptions and the
aspects not considered within scope before listing the requirements
grouped according to areas such as architecture and design goals,
signaling flows, layering, performance, flexibility, security, and
mobility.
1 Introduction
This document defines requirements for signaling QoS across
different network environments. It does not list any problems of
existing QoS signaling protocols such as RSVP.
In order to derive requirements for QoS signaling it is necessary to
first have a clear idea of the scope within which they are
applicable.
We describe a set of QoS signaling scenarios and use cases in the
Appendix of that document. These scenarios derive from a variety of
backgrounds, and help obtain a clearer picture of what is in or out
of scope of the NSIS work. They illustrate the problem of QoS
signaling from various perspectives (end-system, access network,
core network) and for various areas (fixed line, mobile, wireless
environments). As the NSIS work becomes more clearly defined,
scenarios will be added or dropped, or defined in more detail.
Based on these scenarios, we are able to define the QoS signaling
problem on a more abstract level. In Section 3, we thus present a
simple conceptual model of the QoS signaling problem, describe the
entities involved in QoS signaling, and typical signaling paths. In
Section 4 we list assumptions and exclusions.
The model of Section 3 allows deriving requirements from the
scenarios presented in the appendix in a coherent and consistent
manner. Requirements are grouped according to areas such as
Architecture and design goals, Signaling Flows, Layering,
Performance, Flexibility, Security and Mobility.
QoS is a pretty large field with a lot of interaction with other
protocols, mechanisms, applications etc. In the following, some
thoughts from an end-system point of view and from a network point
of view.
End-system perspective: In future mobile terminals, the support of
adaptive applications is more and more important. Adaptively can be
seen as an important technique to react to QoS violations that may
occur frequently, e.g., in wireless environments due to changed
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 2]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
environmental and network conditions. This may result in degraded
end-to-end performance. It is then up to adaptive applications to
react to the new resource availability. Therefore, it is essential
to define interoperability between media-, mobility- and QoS
management. While most likely mobile terminals cannot assume, that
explicit QoS reservation schemes are available, some access networks
nevertheless may offer such capabilities. Applications subscribed to
an end-system QoS management system should be supported with a
dedicated QoS API to set-up, control and adapt media sessions.
Network perspective: QoS enabled IP networks are expected to handle
two different kinds of QoS granularities: per-flow QoS and per-
trunk/per-class QoS. Per-flow QoS might be needed in access networks
and may there be subject of QoS signaling. However, in the core
network only per-trunk or per-class QoS can be considered for
scalability reasons. Therefore there might be different requirements
on QoS signaling applying to different parts of the network. In the
access network QoS signaling is an interaction between end systems
and access routers or access network QoS managers (in the following
we call them QoS initiator and QoS controller). In the core network
QoS signaling refers to trunks or classes of traffic between core
and edge systems or between peering core systems. Please note that
this does not exclude the transport of per-flow signaling through
core networks.
It is clear from these descriptions that the subject of QoS is
uniquely complex and any investigation could potentially have a very
broad scope - so broad that it is a challenge to focus work on an
area which could lead to a concrete and useful result. This is our
motivation for considering a set of use cases, which map out the
domain of application that we want to address. It is also the
motivation for defining a problem structure, which allows us to
state the boundaries of what types of functionality to consider, and
to list background assumptions.
There are several areas of the requirements related to networking
aspects which are incomplete, for example, interaction with host and
site multi-homing, use of anycast services, and so on. These issues
should be considered in any future requirement analysis work.
2 Terminology
In the area of Qualiaty of Service (QoS) it is quite difficult and
an exercise for its own to define terminology. Nevertheless, we
tried to list the most often used terms in the draft and tried to
explain them. However, don't be to religious about it, they are not
meant to prescribe any thing in the draft.
Aggregate: a group of flows, usually with similar QoS requirements,
which can be treated together as a whole with a single overall QoS
requirement for signaling and provisioning. Aggregates and flows can
be further aggregated together.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 3]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
[QoS] Domain: a collection of networks under the same administrative
control and grouped together for administrative purposes.
Egress point: the router via which a path exits a domain/subdomain.
End Host: the end system or host, for whose flows QoS is being
requested and provisioned.
End-to-End QoS: the QoS delivered by the network between two
communicating end hosts. End-to-end QoS co-ordinates and enforces
predefined traffic management policies across multiple network
entities and administrative domains.
Edge-to-edge QoS: QoS within an administrative domain that connects
to other networks rather than hosts or end systems.
Flow: a traffic stream (sequence of IP packets between two end
systems) for which a specific level of QoS is to be provided. The
flow can be unicast (uni- or bi-directional) or multicast.
Flow Administration: represents the policy associated with how flows
should be treated in the network, for example whether and how the
flows should be aggregated. It may consist of both user and local
network management information.
Higher Layers: the higher layer (transport protocol and application)
functions that request QoS from the network layer. The request might
be a trigger generated within the end system, or the trigger might
be provided by some entity within the network (e.g. application
proxy or policy server).
Indication: feedback from QoS provisioning to indicate the current
QoS being provided to a flow or aggregate, and whether any
violations have been detected by the QoS technology being used
within the local domain/subdomain.
Ingress point: the router via which a path enters a
domain/subdomain.
Mapping: the act of transforming parameters from QSCs to values that
are meaningful to the actual QoS technology in use in the
domain/subdomain.
Path: the route across the networks taken by a flow or aggregate,
i.e. which domains/subdomains it passes through and the
egress/ingress points for each.
Path segment: the segment of a path within a single
domain/subdomain.
QoS Administration Function: a generic term for all functions
associated with admission control, policy control, traffic
engineering etc.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 4]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
QoS Control Information: the information the governs the QoS
treatment to be applied to a flow or aggregate, including the QSC,
flow administration, and any associated security or accounting
information.
QoS Controller: this is responsible for interpreting the signaling
carrying the user QoS parameters, optionally inserting/modifying the
parameters according to local network QoS management policy, and
invoking local QoS provisioning mechanisms. Note that q QoS
controller might have very different functionality depending on
where in the network and in what environment they are implemented.
QoS Initiator: this is responsible for generating the QSCs for
traffic flow(s) based on user or application requirements and
signaling them to the network as well as invoking local QoS
provisioning mechanisms. This can be located in the end system, but
may reside elsewhere in network.
QoS Provisioning: the act of actually allocating resources to a flow
or aggregate of flows, may include mechanisms such as LSP initiation
for MPLS, packet scheduler configuration within a router, and so on.
The mechanisms depend on the overall QoS technology being used
within the [sub]domain.
QoS Service Classes (QSC): specify the QoS requirements of a traffic
flow or aggregate. Can be further sub-divided into user specific
and network related parameters
QoS Signaling: a way to communicate QSCs and QoS management
information between hosts, end systems and network devices etc. May
include request and response messages to facilitate negotiation/re-
negotiation, asynchronous feedback messages (not delivered upon
request) to inform End Hosts, QoS initiators and QoS controllers
about current QoS levels, and QoS querying facilities.
[QoS] Subdomain: a network within an administrative domain using a
uniform technology/QoS provisioning function to provision resources.
QoS Technology: a generic term for a set of protocols, standards and
mechanisms that can be used within a QoS domain/subdomain to manage
the QoS provided to flows or aggregates that traverse the domain.
Examples might include MPLS, DiffServ, and so on. A QoS technology
is associated with certain QoS provisioning techniques.
QoS Violation: occurs when the QoS applied to a flow or aggregate
does not meet the requested and negotiated QoS agreed for it.
Resource: something of value in a network infrastructure to which
rules or policy criteria are first applied before access is granted.
Examples of resources include the buffers in a router and bandwidth
on an interface.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 5]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
Resource Allocation: part of a resource that has been dedicated for
the use of a particular traffic type for a period of time through
the application of policies.
Sender-initiated QoS signaling protocol: A sender-initiated QoS
signaling protocol is a protocol (see e.g., YESSIR [8], RMD [10])
where the QI initiates the signaling on behalf of the sender of the
data. What this means is that admission control and resource
allocation functions are processed from the data sender towards the
data receiver. However, the triggering instance is not specified.
Receiver-initiated QoS signalling protocol: A receiver-initiated
protocol, (see e.g., RSVP [9]) is a protocol where the QoS
reservations are initiated by the QoS Reiceiver on behalf of the
receiver of the user data. What this means is that admission control
and resource allocation functions are processed from the data
receiver back towards the data sender. However, the triggering
instance is not specified.
3 Problem Statement and Scope
We provide in the following a preliminary architectural picture as a
basis for discussion. We will refer to it in the following
requirement section.
A set of issues and problems to be solved has been given at a top
level by the use cases/scenarios of the appendix. However, the
problem of QoS has an extremely wide scope and there is a great deal
of work already done to provide different components of the
solution, such as QoS technologies for example. A basic goal should
be to re-use these wherever possible, and to focus requirements work
at an early stage on those areas where a new solution is needed
(e.g. an especially simple one). We also try to avoid defining
requirements related to internal implementation aspects.
In this section, we present a simple conceptual model of the overall
QoS problem in order to identify the applicability to NSIS of
requirements derived from the use cases, and to clarify the scope of
the work, including any open issues. This model also identifies
further sources of requirements from external interactions with
other parts of an overall QoS solution, clarifies the terminology
used, and allows the statement of design goals about the nature of
the solution (see section 5).
Note that this model is intended not to constrain the technical
approach taken subsequently, simply to allow concrete phrasing of
requirements (e.g. requirements about placement of the QoS
initiator, or ability to 'drive' particular QoS technologies.)
Roughly, the scope of NSIS is assumed to be the interaction between
the QoS initiator and QoS controller(s), including selection of
signaling protocols to carry the QoS information, and the
syntax/semantics of the information that is exchanged. Further
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 6]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
statements on assumptions/exclusions are given in the next Section.
The main elements are:
1. Something that starts the request for QoS, the QoS Initiator.
This might be in the end system or within some other part of the
network. The distinguishing feature of the QoS initiator is that it
acts on triggers coming (directly or indirectly) from the higher
layers in the end systems. It needs to map the QoS requested by
them, and also provides feedback information to the higher layers
which might be used by transport layer rate management or adaptive
applications.
2. Something that assists in managing QoS further along the path,
the QoS controller.
The QoS controller does not interact with higher layers, but
interacts with the QoS initiator and possibly more QoS controllers
on the path, edge to edge or possibly end to end.
3. The QoS initiator and controller(s) interact with each other,
path segment by path segment. This interaction involves the exchange
of data (QoS control information) over some signaling protocol.
4. The path segment traverses an underlying network (QoS domain or
subdomain) covering one or more IP hops. The underlying network uses
some local QoS technology. This QoS technology has to be provisioned
appropriately for the flow, and this is done by the QoS initiator
and controller(s), mapping their QoS control information to
technology-related QoS parameters and receiving indications about
success or failure in response.
Now concentrating more on the overall end to end (multiple QoS
domains) aspects, in particular:
1. The QoS initiator need not be located at an end system, and the
QoS controllers are not assumed to be located on the flow's data
path. However, they must be able to identify the ingress and egress
points for the flow path as it traverses the domain/subdomain. Any
signaling protocol must be able to find the appropriate QoS
controller and carry this ingress/egress point information.
2. We see the network at the level of domains/subdomains rather than
individual routers (except in the special case that the domain
contains one link). Domains are assumed to be administrative
entities, so security requirements apply to the signaling between
them. Subdomains are introduced to allow the fact a given QoS
provisioning mechanism may only be used within a part of a domain,
typically for a particular subnetwork technology boundary.
Aggregation can also take place at subdomain boundaries.
3. Any domain may contain QoS administration functions (e.g. to do
with traffic engineering, admission control, policy and so on).
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 7]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
These are assumed to interact with the QoS initiator and controllers
(and end systems) using standard mechanisms.
4. The placement of the QoS initiators and QoS controllers is not
fixed. Actually, there are two extreme cases:
- Each router on the data path implements a QoS controller and QoS
initiator.
- Only the end systems incorporate a QoS controller and QoS
initiator, which means the end systems need to have QoS provisioning
capabilities. However this case does not seam to be realistic but
shows the flexible allocation of the controller and initiator
function.
4 Assumptions and Exclusions
4.1 Assumptions and Non-Assumptions
1. The NSIS signaling could run end to end, end to edge, or edge to
edge, or network-to-network ((between providers), depending on what
point in the network acts as the initiator, and how far towards the
other end of the network the signaling propagates. Although the
figures show QoS controllers at a very limited number of locations
in the network (e.g. at domain or subdomain borders, or even
controlling a complete domain), this is only one possible case. In
general, we could expect QoS controllers to become more 'dense'
towards the edges of the network, but this is not a requirement. An
overprovisioned domain might contain no QoS controllers at all (and
be NSIS transparent); at the other extreme, QoS controllers might be
placed at every router. In the latter case, QoS provisioning can be
carried out in a local implementation-dependent way without further
signalling, whereas in the case of remote QoS controllers, a
provisioning protocol might be needed to control the routers along
the path. This provisioning protocol is then independent of the end
to end NSIS signalling.
2. We do not consider 'pure' end-to-end QoS signaling that is not
interpreted anywhere within the network. Such signaling is an
application-layer issue and IETF protocols such as SIP etc. can be
used.
3. Where the signaling does cover several QoS domains or subdomains,
we do not exclude that different signaling protocols are used in
each path segment. We only place requirements on the universality of
the QoS control information that is being transported. (The goals
here would be to allow the use of signaling protocols which are
matched to the characteristics of the portion of the network being
traversed.) Note that the outcome of NSIS work might result in
various protocols or various flavors of the same protocol. This
implies the need for the translation of information into QoS domain
specific format as well.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 8]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
4. We assume that the service definitions a QoS initiator can ask
for are known in advance of the signaling protocol running. Service
definition includes QoS parameters, life-time of QoS guarantee etc.
There are many ways a service requester get to know about it. There
might be standardized services, the definition can be negotiated
together with a contract, the service definition is published at a
Web-page, etc.
5. We assume that there are means for the discovery of NSIS entities
in order to know the signaling peers (solutions include static
configuration, automatically discovered, or implicitly runs over the
right nodes, etc.)
4.2 Exclusions
1. Development of specific mechanisms and algorithms for application
and transport layer adaptation are not considered, nor are the
protocols that would support it.
2. Specific mechanisms (APIs and so on) for interaction between
transport/applications and the network layer are not considered,
except to clarify the requirements on the negotiation capabilities
and information semantics that would be needed of the signaling
protocol. The same applies to application adaptation mechanisms.
3. Specific mechanisms for QoS provisioning within a
domain/subdomain are not considered. It should be possible to
exploit these mechanisms optimally within the end to end context.
Consideration of how to do this might generate new requirements for
NSIS however. For example, the information needed by an QoS
controller to manage a radio subnetwork needs to be provided by the
NSIS solution.
4. Specific mechanisms (APIs and so on) for interaction between the
network layer and underlying QoS provisioning mechanisms are not
considered.
5. Interaction with QoS administration capabilities is not
considered. Standard protocols should be used for this (e.g. COPS).
This may imply requirements for the sort of information that should
be exchanged between the NSIS network QoS entities.
6. Security issues related to multicasting are outside the scope of
the QoS signaling protocol.
Since multicasting is currently not an issue for the QoS protocol,
security issues related to multicast are outside the scope.
Multicast security may additionally be an application issue that is
also outside the scope of the QoS protocol.
7. Protection of non-QoS signaling messages is outside the scope of
the QoS protocol
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 9]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
Security protection of data messages transmitted along the
established QoS path is outside the scope of the QoS protocol. These
security properties are likely to be application specific and may be
provided by the corresponding application layer protocol.
8. Service definitions and QoS classes are out of scope. Together
with the service definition any definition of service specific
parameters are not considered in this draft. Only the base NSIS
signaling protocol for transporting the QoS/service information are
handled.
9. Similarly, specific methods, protocols, and ways to express QoS
information in the Application/Session level are not considered
(e.g., SDP, SIP, RTSP, etc.).
10. The specification of any extensions needed to signal QoS
information via application level protocols (e.g. SDP(ng)), and the
mapping on NSIS information are considered outside of the scope of
NSIS working group, as this work is in the direct scope of other
IETF working groups (e.g. MMUSIC).
5 Requirements
This section defines more detailed requirements for a QoS signaling
solution, derived from consideration of the use cases/scenarios, and
respecting the framework, scoping assumptions, and terminology
considered earlier. The requirements are in subsections, grouped
roughly according to general technical aspects: architecture and
design goals, topology issues, QoS parameters, performance,
security, information, and flexibility.
Two general (and potentially contradictory) goals for the solution
are that it should be applicable in a very wide range of scenarios,
and at the same time lightweight in implementation complexity and
resource requirements in nodes. One approach to this is that the
solution could deal with certain requirements via modular components
or capabilities, which are optional to implement in individual
nodes.
Some of the requirements are technically contradictory. Depending on
the scenarios a solution applies to, one or the other requirement is
applicable.
Find in Section 6 the MUSTs, SHOULDs, and MAYs
5.1 Architecture and Design Goals
This section contains requirements related to desirable overall
characteristics of a solution, e.g. enabling flexibility, or
independence of parts of the framework.
5.1.1
Applicability for different QoS technologies.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 10]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
The QoS signaling protocol must work with various QoS technologies.
The information exchanged over the signaling protocol must be in
such detail and quantity that it is useful for various QoS
technologies.
5.1.2
Resource availability information on request
In some scenarios, e.g., the mobile terminal scenario, it is
required to query, whether resources are available, without
performing a reservation on the resource. One solution might be a
feedback mechanism based on which a QoS inferred handover can take
place.
5.1.3
Modularity
A modular design allows for more lightweight implementations, if
fewer features are needed. Mutually exclusive solutions are
supported. Examples for modularity:
- Work over any kind of network (narrowband / broadband, error-prone
/ reliable...) - This implies low bandwidth signaling and redundant
information must be supported if necessary.
- In case QoS requirements are soft (e.g. banking transactions,
gaming), fast and lightweight signaling (e.g., not more than one
round-trip time)
- Uni- and bi-directional reservations are possible
5.1.4
Decoupling of protocol and information it is carrying
The signaling protocol(s) used must be clearly separated from the
QoS control information being transported. This provides for the
independent development of these two aspects of the solution, and
allows for this control information to be carried within other
protocols, including application layer ones, existing ones or those
being developed in the future. The gained flexibility in the
information transported allows for the applicability of the same
protocol in various scenarios.
However, note that the information carried needs to be the same.
Otherwise interoperability is difficult to achieve.
5.1.5
Reuse of existing QoS provisioning
Reuse existing QoS functions and protocols for QoS provisioning
within a domain/subdomain unchanged. (Motivation: 'Don't re-invent
the wheel'.)
5.1.6
Avoid duplication of [sub]domain signaling functions
The specification of the NSIS signaling protocol should be optimized
to avoid duplication of existing [sub]domain QoS signaling and to
minimize the overall complexity. (Motivation: we don't want to
introduce duplicate feedback or negotiation mechanisms, or
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 11]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
complicate the work by including all possible existing QoS signaling
in some form. The function will be placed in the new part if it has
to be end-to-end, universal to all network types
('simple/lightweight'), or if it has to be protected by upper layer
security mechanisms.)
The point here is that the QoS technology (lower layer stuff) gets
re-used unchanged, and we have new signaling above it. But, in many
cases the local QoS technology will contain equivalent functions to
the NSIS-required ones, just in a technology specific form. Examples
of these functions would be error/QoS violation notifications,
ability to query for resources and so on. So, there is a danger that
our 'lightweight' signaling ends up trying to carry all this
information all over again, and (even worse) that the
initiator/controller functions have to weigh up nearly equivalent
information coming from two directions. However, the basic problem
here is that the boundary between new and re-used stuff is pretty
shaky. The requirement is trying to scope our problem (a) to
eliminate the potential overlap, and (b) to keep the new NSIS stuff
simple.
However, we are aware that it is very difficult to judge what is
duplicated, if we want to run the protocol in various environments.
5.1.7
Independence of signaling and provisioning paradigm
The QoS signaling should be independent of the paradigm and
mechanism of QoS provisioning. The independence allows for using the
NSIS protocol together with various QoS technologies.
5.2 Signaling Flows
This section contains requirements related to the possible signaling
flows that should be supported, e.g. over what parts of the flow
path, between what entities (end-systems, routers, middleboxes,
management systems), in which direction.
5.2.1
Free placement of QoS Initiator and QoS Controllers functions
The protocol(s) must work in various scenarios such as host-to-
network-to-host, edge-to-edge, (e.g., just within one providers
domain), user-to-network (from end system into the network, ending,
e.g., at the entry to the network and vice versa), network-to-
network (e.g., between providers).
Placing the QoS controller and initiator functions at different
locations allows for various scenarios to work with the same or
similar protocols.
5.2.2
No constraint of the QoS signaling and QoS Controllers to be in
the data path.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 12]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
There is a set of scenarios, where QoS signaling is not on the data
path. The QoS Controller being in the data path is one extreme case
and useful in certain cases.
There are going to be cases where a centralized entity will take a
decision about QoS requests. In this case, there's no question there
is no need to have data follow the signalling path.
There are going to be cases wiout a centralized entity managing
resources and the signaling will be used as a tool for resource
management. For various reasons (such as efficient use of expensive
bandwidth), one will want to have fine-grained, fast, and very
dynamic control of the resources in the network. -
There are going to be cases where there will be neither signaling
nor a centralized entity (overprovisioning). Nothing has to be done
anyway.
One can capture the requirement with the following wording: If one
views the domain with a QoS technology as a virtual router then NSIS
signaling used between those virtual routers must follow the same
path as the data.
Routing the signaling protocol along an independent path is desired
by network operators/designers. Ideally, the capability to route the
protocol along an independent path would give the network
designer/operator the option to manage bandwidth utilization through
the topology.
There are other possibilities as well. An NSIS protocol must accept
all of these possibilities.
5.2.3
Concealment of topology and technology information
The QoS protocol should allow hiding the internal structure of a QoS
domain from end-nodes and from other networks. Hence an adversary
should not be able to learn the internal structure of a network with
the help of the QoS protocol.
In various scenarios, topology information should be hidden for
various reasons. From a business point of view, some administrations
don't want to reveal the topology and technology used.
5.2.4
Optional transparency of QoS signaling to network
It should be possible that the QoS signaling for some flows traverse
path segments transparently, i.e., without interpretation at QoS
controllers within the network. An example would be a subdomain
within a core network, which only interpreted signaling for
aggregates established at the domain edge, with the flow-related
signaling passing transparently through it.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 13]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
5.3 Additional information beyond signaling of QoS information
This section contains the desired signaling (messages) for other
purposes other than that for conveying QoS parameters.
5.3.1
Explicit release of resources
When a QoS reservation is no longer necessary, e.g. because the
application terminates, or because a mobile host experienced a hand-
off, it must be possible to explicitly release resources.
5.3.2
Possibility for automatic release of resources after failure
When the QoS Initiator goes down, the resources it requested should
be released, since they will no longer be necessary.
5.3.3
Possibility for automatic re-setup of resources after recovery
In case of a failure, the reservation can get setup again
automatically. It enables sort of a persistent reservation, if the
QoS Initiator requests it. In scenarios where the reservations are
on a longer time scale, this could make sense to reduce the
signaling load in case of failure and recovery.
5.3.4
Prompt notification of QoS violation in case of error / failure to
QoS Initiator and QoS Controllers
5.3.5
Feedback about success of request for QoS guarantees
A request for QoS must be answered at least with yes or no. However,
it might be useful in case of a negative answer to also get a
description of what might be the QoS one can successfully request
etc. So it might be useful to include an opaque element into the
answer. The element heavily depends on the service requested.
5.4 Layering
This section contains requirements related to the way the signaling
being considered interacts with upper layer functions (users,
applications, and QoS administration), and lower layer QoS
technologies.
5.4.1
The signaling protocol and QoS control information should be
application independent.
However, opaque application information might get transported in the
signaling message, without being handled in the network. Development
and deployment of new applications should be possible without
impacting the network infrastructure. Additionally, QoS protocols
are expected to conform to the Internet principles.
5.5 QoS Control Information
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 14]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
This section contains requirements related to the QoS control
information that needs to be exchanged.
5.5.1
Mutability information on parameters
It should be possible for the initiator to control the mutability of
the QSC information. This prevents from being changed in a non-
recoverable way. The initiator should be able to control what is
requested end to end, without the request being gradually mutated as
it passes through a sequence of domains. This implies that in case
of changes made on the parameters, the original requested ones must
still be available.
Note that we do not require anything about particular QoS paramters
being changed.
5.5.2
Possibility to add and remove local domain information
It should be possible for the QoS control functions to add and
remove local scope elements. E.g., at the entrance to a QoS domain
domain-specific information is added, which is used in this domain
only, and the information is removed again when a signaling message
leaves the domain. The motivation is in the economy of re-use the
protocol for domain internal signaling of various information. Where
additional information is needed for QoS control within a particular
domain, it should be possible to carry this at the same time as the
'end to end' information.)
5.5.3
Independence of reservation identifier
A reservation identifier must be used, which is independent of the
flow identifier, the IP address of the QoS Initiator, and the flow
end-points. Various scenarios in the mobility area require this
independence because flows resulting from handoff might have changed
end-points etc. but still have the same QoS requirement.
5.5.4
Seamless modification of already reserved QoS
In many case, the reservation needs to be updated (up or downgrade).
This must happen seamlessly without service interruption. At least
the signaling protocol must allow for it, even if some data path
elements might not be capable of doing so.
5.5.5
Signaling must support quantitative, qualitative, and relative QoS
specifications
5.6 Performance
This section discusses performance requirements and evaluation
criteria and the way in which these could and should be traded off
against each other in various parts of the solution.
Scalability is a must anyway. However, depending on the scenario the
question to which extends the protocol must be scalable.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 15]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
5.6.1
Scalability in the number of messages received by a signaling
communication partner (QoS initiator and controller)
5.6.2
Scalability in number of hand-offs
5.6.3
Scalability in the number of interactions for setting up a
reservation
5.6.4
Scalability in the number of state per entity (QoS initiators and
QoS controllers)
5.6.5
Scalability in CPU use (end terminal and intermediate nodes)
5.6.6
Low latency in setup
Low latency is only needed in scenarios, where reservations are in a
short time scale (e.g. mobile environments), or where human
interaction is immediately concerned (e.g., voice communication
setup delay)
5.6.7
Allow for low bandwidth consumption for signaling protocol
Again only small sets of scenarios call for low bandwidth, mainly
those where wireless links are involved.
Note that many of the performance issues are heavily dependent on
the scenario assumed and are normally a trade-off between speed,
reliability, complexity, and scalability. The trade-off varies in
different parts of the network. For example, in radio access
networks low bandwidth consumption will overweight the low latency
requirement, while in core networks it may be reverse.
5.6.8
Ability to constrain load on devices
The NSIS architecture should give the ability to constrain the load
(CPU load, memory space, signaling bandwidth consumption and
signaling intensity) on devices where it is needed. This can be
achieved by many different methods, for example message aggregation,
by ignoring signaling message, header compression or minimizing
functionality. The architecture may choose any of these methods as
long as the requirement is met.
5.7 Flexibility
This section lists the various ways the protocol can flexibly be
employed.
5.7.1
Aggregation capability, including the capability to select and
change the level of aggregation.
5.7.2
Flexibility in the placement of the QoS initiator
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 16]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
It might be the sender or the receiver of content. But also network-
initiated reservations are required in various scenarios.
5.7.3
Flexibility in the initiation of re-negotiation (QoS change
requests)
Again the sender or the receiver of content might initiate a re-
negotiation due to various reasons, such as local resource shortage
(CPU, memory on end-system) or a user changed application
preference/profiles. But also network-initiated re-negotiation is
required in cases, where the network is not able to further
guarantee resources etc.
5.7.4
Uni / bi-directional reservation
Both uni-directonal as well as bi-direction reservations must be
possible.
5.8 Security
This section discusses security-related requirements. First a list
of security threats is given.
5.8.1
The QoS protocol must provide strong authentication
A QoS protocol must make provision for enabling various entities to
be authenticated against each other using data origin and/or entity
authentication. The QoS protocol must enable mutual authentication
between the two communicating entities. The term strong
authentication points to the fact that weak plain-text password
mechanisms must not be used for authentication.
5.8.2
The QoS protocol must provide means to authorize resource requests
This requirement demands a hook to interact with a policy entity to
request authorization data. This allows an authenticated entity to
be associated with authorization data and to verify the resource
request. Authorization prevents reservations by unauthorized
entities, reservations violating policies, theft of service and
additionally limits denial of service attacks against parts of the
network or the entire network. Additionally it might be helpful to
provide some means to inform other protocols of participating nodes
within the same administrative domain about a previous successful
authorization event.
5.8.3
The QoS signaling messages must provide integrity protection.
The integrity protection of the transmitted signaling messages
prevent an adversary from modifying parts of the QoS signaling
message and from mounting denial of service attacks against network
elements participating in the QoS protocol.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 17]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
5.8.4
The QoS signaling messages must be replay protected.
To prevent replay of previous signaling messages the QoS protocol
must provide means to detect old messages. A solution must cover
issues of synchronization problems in the case of a restart or a
crash of a participating network element. The use of replay
mechanism apart from sequence numbers should be investigated.
5.8.5
The QoS signaling protocol must allow for hop-by-hop security.
Hop-by-Hop security is a well known and proven concept in QoS
protocols that allows intermediate nodes that actively participate
in the QoS protocol to modify the messages as required by the QoS
processing. Note that this requirement does not exclude end-to-end
or network-to-network security of a QoS reservation request. End-to-
end security between the initiator and the responder may be used to
provide protection of non-mutable data fields. Network-to-network
security refers to the protection of messages over various hops but
not in an end-to-end manner i.e. protected over a particular
network.
5.8.6
The QoS protocol should allow identity confidentiality and
location privacy.
Identity confidentiality enables privacy and avoids profiling of
entities by adversary eavesdropping the signaling traffic along the
path. The identity used in the process of authentication may also be
hidden to a limited extent from a network to which the initiator is
attached. It is however required that the identity provide enough
information for the access network to collect accounting data.
Location privacy is an issue for the initiator who triggers the QoS
protocol. In some scenarios the initiator may not be willing to
reveal location information to the responder.
5.8.7
The QoS protocol should prevent denial-of-service attacks against
signaling entities.
To effectively prevent denial-of-service attacks the QoS protocol
and the used security mechanisms should not force to do heavy
computation to verify a resource request prior authenticating the
requesting entity. Additionally the QoS protocol and the used
security mechanisms should not require large resource consumption
(for example main memory or other additional message exchanges)
before a successful authentication was done.
5.8.8
The QoS protocol should support confidentiality of signaling
messages.
Based on the signaling information exchanged between nodes
participating in the QoS protocol an adversary may learn both the
identities and the content of the QoS messages. To prevent this from
happening, confidentiality of the QoS requests in a hop-by-hop
manner should be provided. Note that hop-by-hop is always required
whenever entities actively participating in the protocol must be
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 18]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
able to read and eventually modify the content of the QoS messages.
This does not exclude the case where one or more network elements
are not required to read the information of the transmitted QoS
messages.
5.8.9
The QoS protocol should provide hooks to interact with protocols
that allow the negotiation of authentication and key management
protocols.
The negotiation of an authentication and key management protocols
within the QoS protocol is outside the scope of the QoS protocol.
This requirement originates from the fact that more than one key
management protocol may be used to provide security associations. So
both entities must be capable to use the same protocol which may be
difficult in a mobile environment with different requirements and
different protocols. The goal of such a negotiation step is to
determine which authentication and key management protocol to use is
executed prior to the execution of the chosen key management
protocol. The used key management protocol must however be able to
create a security association that matches with the one used in the
QoS protocol. A QoS protocol should however provide a way to
interact with these negotiation protocols.
5.8.10 The QoS protocol should provide means to interact with key
management protocols
Key management protocols typically require a larger number of
messages to be transmitted to allow a session key and the
corresponding security association to be derived. To avoid the
complex issue of mapping individual authentication and key
management protocols to a QoS protocol such a protocol is outside
the scope of the QoS protocol. Although the key management protocol
may be independent there must be a way for the QoS protocol to
exploit existing security associations to avoid executing a separate
key management protocol (or instance of the same protocol) for
protocols that closely operate together. If no such security
association exists then there should be means for the QoS protocol
to trigger a key management protocol to dynamically create the
required security associations.
5.9 Mobility
TBD
5.10 Interworking with other protocols and techniques
Hooks must be provided to enable efficient interworking between
various protocols and techniques including:
5.10.1 Interworking with IP tunneling
IP tunneling for various applications must be supported. More
specifically tunneling for IPSec tunnels are of importance. This
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 19]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
mainly impacts the identification of flows. Additionally, care needs
to be taken using IPSec for signaling message.
5.10.2 The solution should not constrain either to IPv4 or IPv6
5.10.3 Independence from charging model
Signaling must not be constrained by charging models or the charging
infrastructure used. However, the end-system should be able to query
current pay statistics and to specify user cost functions.
5.10.4 The QoS protocol should provide hooks for AAA protocols
The security mechanism should be developed with respect to be able
to collect usage records from one or more network elements.
5.11 Operational
5.11.1 Ability to assign transport quality to signaling messages
The NSIS architecture should allow the network operator to assign
the NSIS protocol messages a certain transport quality. As signaling
opens up for possible denial-of-service attacks, this requirement
gives the network operator a mean, but also the obligation, to
trade-off between signaling latency and the impact (from the
signaling messages) on devices within his/her network. From protocol
design this requirement states that the protocol messages should be
detectable, at least where the control and assignment of the
messages priority is done.
6 The MUSTs, SHOULDs, and MAYs
In order to prioritize the various requirements from Section 5, we
define different 'parts of the network'. In the different parts of
the network a particular requirement might have a different
priority.
The parts of the networks we differentiate are the host-to-first
router, the access network, and the core network. The host to first
router part includes all the layer 2 technologies to access to the
Internet. In many cases, there is an application and/or user running
on the host initiating QoS signaling. The access network can be
characterized by low capacity links, meadium speed IP processing
capabilities, and it might consist of a complete layer 2 network as
well. The core network characteristics include high-speed forwarding
capacities and interdomain QoS issues. All of them are not strictly
defined and should not be regarded as that, but should give a
feeling about where in the network we have different requirements
concerning QoS signaling.
Note that the requirement titles are listed for better reading.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 20]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
5.1 Architecture and Design Goals
5.1.1 Applicability for different QoS technologies.
5.1.2 Resource availability information on request
5.1.3 Modularity
5.1.4 Decoupling of protocol and information it is carrying
5.1.5 Reuse of existing QoS provisioning
5.1.6 Avoid duplication of [sub]domain signaling functions
5.1.7 Independence of signaling and provisioning paradigm
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.1.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.1.2 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.1.3 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.1.4 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.1.5 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.1.6 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.1.7 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.2 Signaling Flows
5.2.1 Free placement of QoS Initiator and QoS Controllers functions
5.2.2 No constraint of the QoS signaling and QoS Controllers to be
in the data path.
5.2.3 Concealment of topology and technology information
5.2.4 Optional transparency of QoS signaling to network
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.2.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.2.2 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.2.3 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.2.4 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 21]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
5.3 Additional information beyond signaling of QoS information
5.3.1 Explicit release of resources
5.3.2 Possibility for automatic release of resources after failure
5.3.3 Possibility for automatic re-setup of resources after recovery
5.3.4 Prompt notification of QoS violation in case of error /
failure to QoS Initiator and QoS Controllers
5.3.5 Feedback about success of request for QoS guarantees
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.3.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.3.2 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.3.3 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.3.4 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.3.5 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.4 Layering
5.4.1 The signaling protocol and QoS control information should be
application independent.
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.4.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.5 QoS Control Information
5.5.1 Mutability information on parameters
5.5.2 Possibility to add and remove local domain information
5.5.3 Independence of reservation identifier
5.5.4 Seamless modification of already reserved QoS
5.5.5 Signaling must support quantitative, qualitative, and relative
QoS specifications
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.5.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.5.2 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.5.3 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.5.4 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.5.5 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 22]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
5.6 Performance
5.6.1 Scalability in the number of messages received by a signaling
communication partner (QoS initiator and controller)
5.6.2 Scalability in number of hand-offs
5.6.3 Scalability in the number of interactions for setting up a
reservation
5.6.4 Scalability in the number of state per entity (QoS initiators
and QoS controllers)
5.6.5 Scalability in CPU use (end terminal and intermediate nodes)
5.6.6 Low latency in setup
5.6.7 Allow for low bandwidth consumption for signaling protocol
5.6.8 Ability to constrain load on devices
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.6.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.6.2 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.6.3 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.6.4 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.6.5 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.6.6 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.6.7 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.6.8 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.7 Flexibility
5.7.1 Aggregation capability, including the capability to select and
change the level of aggregation.
5.7.2 Flexibility in the placement of the QoS initiator
5.7.3 Flexibility in the initiation of re-negotiation (QoS change
requests)
5.7.4 Uni / bi-directional reservation
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.7.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.7.2 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.7.3 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.7.4 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 23]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
5.8 Security
5.8.1 The QoS protocol must provide strong authentication
5.8.2 The QoS protocol must provide means to authorize resource
requests
5.8.3 The QoS signaling messages must provide integrity protection.
5.8.4 The QoS signaling messages must be replay protected.
5.8.5 The QoS signaling protocol must allow for hop-by-hop security.
5.8.6 The QoS protocol should allow identity confidentiality and
location privacy.
5.8.7 The QoS protocol should prevent denial-of-service attacks
against signaling entities.
5.8.8 The QoS protocol should support confidentiality of signaling
messages.
5.8.9 The QoS protocol should provide hooks to interact with
protocols that allow the negotiation of authentication and key
management protocols.
5.8.10 The QoS protocol should provide means to interact with key
management protocols.
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.2 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.3 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.4 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.5 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.6 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.7 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.8 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.9 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.8.10 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.9 Mobility
5.10 Interworking with other protocols and techniques
5.10.1 Interworking with IP tunneling
5.10.2 The solution should not constrain either to IPv4 or IPv6
5.10.3 Independence from charging model
5.10.4 The QoS protocol should provide hooks for AAA protocols
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 24]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.10.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.10.2 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.10.3 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.10.4 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.11 Operational
5.11.1 Ability to assign transport quality to signaling messages
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
| host-to-net | access | core |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
5.11.1 | | | |
----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------+
7 References
[1] Kempf, J., "Dormant Mode Host Alerting ("IP Paging") Problem
Statement", RFC 3132, June 2001.
[2] Chaskar, H., "Requirements of a QoS Solution for Mobile IP",
draft-ietf-mobileip-qos-requirements-01.txt, Work in Progress,
August 2001
[3] Manner. J., et al, "Mobility Related Terminology", draft-manner-
seamoby-terms-02.txt, Work In Progress, July 2001.
[4] 3GPP, "General Packet Radio Service (GPRS); Service Description
Stage 2 v 7.7.0", TS 03.60, June 2001
[5] 3GPP2, "Network Reference Model for cdma2000 Spread Spectrum
System, revision B", S.R0005-B, May 2001
[6] Bradner, S., Mankin, A., "Report of the Next Steps in Signaling
BOF", draft-bradner-nsis-bof-00.txt, Work in Progress, July 2001
[7] Partain, D., et al, "Resource Reservation Issues in Cellular
Radio Access Networks", draft-westberg-rmd-cellular-issues-00.txt,
Work in Progress, June 2001.
[8] YESSIR - YEt another Sender Session Internet Reservations,
h
ttp://www.cs.columbia.edupingpan/projects/yessir.htm
l
[9] Braden, R., Zhang, L., Berson, S., Herzog, A., Jamin, S.,
"Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) -- Version 1 Functional
Specification", IETF RFC 2205, 1997.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 25]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
[10] Westberg, L., Jacobsson, M., Partain, D., Karagiannis, G.,
Oosthoek, S., Rexhepi, V., Szabo, R., Wallentin, P., "Resource
Management in Diffserv Framework", Internet draft, work in progress,
draft-westberg-rmd-framework-xx.txt, 2002.
[11] Kempf, J., McCann, P., Roberts, P., "IP Mobility and the CDMA
Radio Access Network", IETF Draft, draft-kempf-cdma-appl-02.txt,
Work in progress, September 2001.
8 Appendix: Scenarios/Use cases
In the following we describe scenarios, which are important to
cover, and which allow us to discuss various requirements. Some
regard this as use cases to be covered defining the use of a QoS
signaling protocol.
8.1 Scenario: Terminal Mobility
The scenario we are looking at is the case where a mobile terminal
(MT) changes from one access point to another access point. The
access points are located in separate QoS domains. We assume Mobile
IP to handle mobility on the network layer in this scenario and
consider the various extensions (i.e., IETF proposals) to Mobile IP,
in order to provide 'fast handover' for roaming Mobile Terminals.
The goal to be achieved lies in providing, keeping, and adapting the
requested QoS for the ongoing IP sessions in case of handover.
Furthermore, the negotiation of QoS parameters with the new domain
via the old connection might be needed, in order to support the
different 'fast handover' proposals within the IETF.
The entities involved in this scenario include a mobile terminal,
access points, an access network manager, communication partners of
the MT (the other end(s) of the communication association).
From a technical point of view, terminal mobility means changing the
access point of a mobile terminal (MT). However, technologies might
change in various directions (access technology, QoS technology,
administrative domain). If the access points are within one specific
QoS technology (independent of access technology) we call this
intra-QoS technology handoff. In the case of an inter-QoS technology
handoff, one changes from e.g. a DiffServ to an IntServ domain,
however still using the same access technology. Finally, if the
access points are using different access technologies we call it
inter-technology hand-off.
The following issues are of special importance in this scenario:
1) Handoff decision
- The QoS management requests handoff. The QoS management can decide
to change the access point, since the traffic conditions of the new
access point are better supporting the QoS requirements. The metric
may be different (optimized towards a single or a group/class of
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 26]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
users). Note that the MT or the network (see below) might trigger
the handoff.
- The mobility management forces handoff. This can have several
reasons. The operator optimizes his network, admission is no longer
granted (e.g. emptied prepaid condition). Or another example is when
the MT is reaching the focus of another base station. However, this
might be detected via measurements of QoS on the physical layer and
is therefore out of scope of QoS signaling in IP. Note again that
the MT or the network (see below) might trigger the handoff.
- This scenario shows that local decisions might not be enough. The
rest of the path to the other end of the communication needs to be
considered as well. Hand-off decisions in a QoS domain, does not
only depend on the local resource availability, e.g., the wireless
part, but involves the rest of the path as well. Additionally,
decomposition of an end-to-end reservation might be needed, in order
to change only parts of it.
2) Trigger sources
- Mobile terminal: If the end-system QoS management identifies
another (better-suited) access point, it will request the handoff
from the terminal itself. This will be especially likely in the case
that two different provider networks are involved. Another important
example is when the current access point bearer disappears (e.g.
removing the Ethernet cable). In this case, the QoS initiator is
basically located on the mobile terminal.
- Network (access network manager): Sometimes, the handoff trigger
will be issued from the network management to optimize the overall
load situation. Most likely this will result in changing the base-
station of a single providers network. Most likely the QoS initiator
is located on a system within the network.
3) Integration with other protocols
- Interworking with other protocol must be considered in one or the
other form. E.g., it might be worth combining QoS signaling between
different QoS domains with mobility signaling at hand-over.
4) Handover rates
In mobile networks, the admission control process has to cope with
far more admission requests than call setups alone would generate.
For example, in the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications)
case, mobility usually generates an average of one to two handovers
per call. For third generation networks (such as UMTS), where it is
necessary to keep radio links to several cells simultaneously
(macro-diversity), the handover rate is significantly higher (see
for example [11])
5) Fast reservations
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 27]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
Handover can also cause packet losses. This happens when the
processing of an admission request causes a delayed handover to the
new base station. In this situation, some packets might be
discarded, and the overall speech quality might be degraded
significantly. Moreover, a delay in handover may cause degradation
for other users. In the worst case scenario, a delay in handover may
cause the connection to be dropped if the handover occurred due to
bad air link quality. Therefore, it is critical that QoS signalling
in connection with handover be carried out very quickly.
6) Call blocking in case of overload
Furthermore, when the network is overloaded, it is preferable to
keep reservations for previously established flows while blocking
new requests. Therefore, the resource reservation requests in
connection with handover should be given higher priority than new
requests for resource reservation.
8.2 Scenario: Cellular Networks
In this scenario, the user is using the packet service of a 3rd
generation cellular system, e.g. UMTS. The region between the End
Host and the edge node connecting the cellular network to another
QoS domain (e.g. the GGSN in UMTS or the PDSN in 3GPP2) is
considered to be a single QoS domain [4][5].
The issues in such an environment regarding QoS include:
1) Cellular systems provide their own QoS technology with
specialized parameters to co-ordinate the QoS provided by both the
radio access and wired access network. For example, in a UMTS
network, one aspect of GPRS is that it can be considered as a QoS
technology; provisioning of QoS within GPRS is described mainly in
terms of calling UMTS bearer classes. This QoS technology needs to
be invoked with suitable parameters when a request for QoS is
triggered by higher layers, and this therefore involves mapping the
requested IP QoS onto these UMTS bearer classes. This request for
resources might be triggered by IP signaling messages that pass
across the cellular system, and possibly other QoS domains, to
negotiate for network resources. Typically, cellular system specific
messages invoke the underlying cellular system QoS technology in
parallel with the IP QoS negotiation, to allocate the resources
within the cellular system.
2) The placement of QoS initiators and QoS controllers (terminology
in the framework given here). The QoS initiator could be located at
the End Host (triggered by applications), the GGSN/PDSN, or at a
node not directly on the data path, such as a bandwidth broker. In
the second case, the GGSN/PDSN could either be acting as a proxy on
behalf of an End Host with little capabilities, and/or managing
aggregate resources within its QoS domain (the UMTS core network).
The IP signaling messages are interpreted by the QoS controllers,
which may be located at the GGSN/PDSN, and in any QoS sub-domains
within the cellular system.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 28]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
3) Initiation of IP-level QoS negotiation. IP-level QoS re-
negotiation may be initiated by either the End Host, or by the
network, based on current network loads, which might change
depending on the location of the end host.
4) The networks are designed and mainly used for speech
communication (at least so far).
Note that in comparison to the former scenario, the emphasis is much
less on the mobility aspects, because mobility is mainly handled on
the lower layer.
8.3 Scenario: UMTS access
The UMTS access scenario is shown in figure 3. The Proxy-Call State
Control Function/Policy Control Function (P-CSCF/PCF) is the
outbound SIP proxy of the visited domain, i.e. the domain where the
mobile user wants to set-up a call. The Gateway GPRS Support Node
(GGSN) is the egress router of the UMTS domain and connects the UMTS
access network to the Edge Router (ER) of the core IP network. The
P-CSCF/PCF communicates with the GGSN via the COPS protocol [4]. The
User Equipment (UE) consists of a Mobile Terminal (MT) and Terminal
Equipment (TE), e.g. a laptop.
+--------+
+----------| P-CSCF |-------> SIP signaling
/ +--------+
/ SIP :
: +--------+ NSIS +----------------+
: | PCF |---------| QoS Controller |
: +--------+ +----------------+
: :
: : COPS
: :
+----+ +--------+ +----+
| UE |----------| GGSN |------| ER |
+----+ +--------+ +----+
Figure 1: UMTS access scenario
In this scenario the GGSN has the role of Access Gate. According to
3GPP standardization, the PCF is responsible for the policy-based
control of the end-user service in the UMTS access network (i.e.
from UE to GGSN). In the current UMTS release R.5, the PCF is part
of the P-CSCF, but in UMTS R.6 the interface between P-CSCF and PCF
may evolve to an open standardized interface. In any case the PCF
has all required QoS information for per-flow admission control in
the UMTS access network (which it gets from the P-CSCF and/or GGSN).
Thus the PCF would be the appropriate entity to host the
functionality of QI, initiating the "NSIS" QoS signaling towards the
core IP network. The PCF/P-CSCF has to do the mapping from codec
type (derived from SIP/SDP signaling) to IP traffic descriptor. SDP
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 29]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
extensions to explicitly signal QoS information [7] are useful to
avoid the need to store codec information in the PCF and to allow
for more flexibility and accurate description of the QoS traffic
parameters. The PCF also controls the GGSN to open and close the
gates and to configure per-flow policers, i.e. to authorize or
forbid user traffic.
The QC is (of course) not part of the standard UMTS architecture.
However, to achieve end-to-end QoS a QC is needed such that the PCF
can request a QoS connection to the IP network. As in the previous
example, the QC could manage a set of pre-provisioned resources in
the IP network, i.e. bandwidth pipes, and the QC performs per-flow
admission control into these pipes. In this way, a connection can be
made between two UMTS access networks, and hence, end-to-end QoS can
be achieved. In this case the QI and QC are clearly two separate
entities.
This use case clearly illustrates the need for an "NSIS" QoS
signaling protocol between QI and QC. An important application of
such a protocol may be its use in the inter-connection of UMTS
networks over an IP backbone.
8.4 Wired part of wireless network
A wireless network, seen from a QoS domain perspective, usually
consists of three parts: a wireless interface part (the "radio
interface"), a wired part of the wireless network (i.e., Radio
Access Network) and the backbone of the wireless network, as shown
in Figure 2. Note that this figure should not be seen as an
architectural overview of wireless networks but rather as showing
the conceptual QoS domains in a wireless network.
In this scenario, a mobile host can roam and perform a handover
procedure between base stations/access routers. In this scenario the
NSIS QoS protocol can be applied between a base station and the
gateway (GW). In this case a GW can also be considered as a local
handover anchor point. Furthermore, in this scenario the NSIS QoS
protocol can also be applied either between two GWs, or between two
edge routers (ER).
|--|
|GW|
|--| |--|
|MH|--- .
|--| / |-------| .
/--|base | |--| .
|station|-|ER|....
|-------| |--| . |--| back- |--| |---|
|----|
...|ER|.......|ER|..|BGW|.."Internet"..|host|
-- |-------| |--| . |--| bone |--| |---|
|----|
|--| \ |base |-|ER|... .
|MH| \ |station| |--| .
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 30]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
|--|--- |-------| . MH = mobile host
|--| ER = edge router
<----> |GW| GW = gateway
Wireless link |--| BGW = border gateway
... = interior nodes
<------------------->
Wired part of wireless network
<---------------------------------------->
Wireless Network
Figure 2. QoS architecture of wired part of wireless network
Each of these parts of the wireless network impose different issues
to be solved on the QoS signaling solution being used:
* Wireless interface: The solution for the air interface link
has to ensure flexibility and spectrum efficient transmission
of IP packets. However, this link layer QoS can be solved in
the same way as any other last hop problem by allowing a
host to request the proper QoS profile.
* Wired part of the wireless network: This is the part of
the network that is closest to the base stations/access
routers. It is an IP network although some parts logically
perform tunneling of the end user data. In cellular networks,
the wired part of the wireless network is denoted as a
radio access network.
This part of the wireless network has different
characteristics when compared to traditional IP networks:
1. The network supports a high proportion of real-time
traffic. The majority of the traffic transported in the
wired part of the wireless network is speech, which is
very sensitive to delays and delay variation (jitter).
2. The network must support mobility. Many wireless
networks are able to provide a combination of soft
and hard handover procedures. When handover occurs,
reservations need to be established on new paths.
The establishment time has to be as short as possible
since long establishment times for reservations degrade
the performance of the wireless network. Moreover,
for maximal utilization of the radio spectrum, frequent
handover operations are required.
3. These links are typically rather bandwidth-limited.
4. The wired transmission in such a network contains a
relatively high volume of expensive leased lines.
Overprovisioning might therefore be prohibitively
expensive.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 31]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
5. The radio base stations are spread over a wide
geographical area and are in general situated a large
distance from the backbone.
* Backbone of the wireless network: the requirements imposed
by this network are similar to the requirements imposed by
other types of backbone networks.
Due to these very different characteristics and requirements, often
contradictory, different QoS signalling solutions might be needed in
each of the three network parts.
8.5 Scenario: Session Mobility
In this scenario, a session is moved from one end-system to another.
Ongoing sessions are kept and QoS parameters need to be adapted,
since it is very likely that the new device provides different
capabilities. Note that it is open which entity initiates the move,
which implies that the QoS initiator might be triggered by different
entities.
User mobility (i.e., a user changing the device and therefore moving
the sessions to the new device) is considered to be a special case
within the session mobility scenario.
Note that this scenario is different from terminal mobility. Not the
terminal (end-system) has moved to a different access point. Both
terminals are still connected to an IP network at their original
points.
The issues include:
1) Keeping the QoS guarantees negotiated implies that the end-
point(s) of communication are changed without changing the
reservations.
2) The trigger of the session move might be the user or any other
party involved in the session.
8.6 Scenario: QoS reservations/negotiation from access to core network
The scenario includes the signaling between access networks and core
networks in order to setup and change reservations together with
potential negotiation.
The issues to be solved in this scenario are different from previous
ones.
1) The entity of reservation is most likely an aggregate.
2) The time scales of reservations might be different (long living
reservations of aggregates, rarer re-negotiation).
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 32]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
3) The specification of the traffic (amount of traffic), a
particular QoS is guaranteed for, needs to be changed. E.g., in case
additional flows are added to the aggregate, the traffic
specification of the flow needs to be added if it is not already
included in the aggregates specification.
4) The flow specification is more complex including network
addresses and sets of different address for the source as well as
for the destination of the flow.
8.7 Scenario: QoS reservation/negotiation over administrative
boundaries
Signaling between two or more core networks to provide QoS is
handled in this scenario. This might also include access to core
signaling over administrative boundaries. Compared to the previous
one it adds the case, where the two networks are not in the same
administrative domain. Basically, it is the inter-domain/inter
provider signaling which is handled in here.
The domain boundary is the critical issue to be resolved. Which as
various flavors of issues a QoS signaling protocol has to be
concerned with.
1) Competing administrations: Normally, only basic information
should be exchanged, if the signaling is between competing
administrations. Specifically information about core network
internals (e.g., topology, technology, etc.) should not be
exchanged. Some information exchange about the "access points" of
the core networks (which is topology information as well) may need
to be exchanged, because it is needed for proper signaling.
2) Additionally, as in scenario 4, signaling most likely is based on
aggregates, with all the issues raise there.
3) Authorization: It is critical that the QoS initiator is
authorized to perform a QoS path setup.
4) Accountability: It is important to notice that signaling might be
used as an entity to charge money for, therefore the interoperation
with accounting needs to be available.
8.8 Scenario: QoS signaling between PSTN gateways and backbone routers
A PSTN gateway (i.e., host) requires information from the network
regarding its ability to transport voice traffic across the network.
The voice quality will suffer due to packet loss, latency and
jitter. Signaling is used to identify and admit a flow for which
these impairments are minimized. In addition, the disposition of
the signaling request is used to allow the PSTN GW to make a call
routing decision before the call is actually accepted and delivered
to the final destination.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 33]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
PSTN gateways may handle thousands of calls simultaneously and there
may be hundreds of PSTN gateways in a single provider network. These
numbers are likely to increase as the size of the network increases.
The point being that scalability is a major issue.
There are several ways that a PSTN gateway can acquire assurances
that a network can carry its traffic across the network. These
include:
1. Over-provisioning a high availability network.
2. Handling admission control through some policy server
that has a global view of the network and its resources.
3. Per PSTN GW pair admission control.
4. Per call admission control (where a call is defined as
the 5 tuple used to carry a single RTP flow).
Item 1 requires no signaling at all and is therefore outside the
scope of this working group.
Item 2 is really a better informed version of 1, but it is also
outside the scope of this working group as it relies on a particular
telephony signaling protocol rather than a packet admission control
protocol.
Item 3 is initially attractive as it appears to have reasonable
scaling properties, however, its scaling properties only are
effective in cases where there are relatively few PSTN GWs. In the
more general case were a PSTN GW reduces to a single IP phone
sitting behind some access network, the opportunities for
aggregation are reduced and the problem reduces to item 4.
Item 4 is the most general case. However, it has the most difficult
scaling problems. The objective here is to place the requirements on
Item 4 such that a scalable per-flow admission control protocol or
protocol suite may be developed.
The case where per-flow signaling extends to individual IP end-
points allows the inclusion of IP phones on cable, DSL, wireless or
other access networks in this scenario.
Call Scenario
A PSTN GW signals end-to-end for some 5 tuple defined flow a
bandwidth and QoS requirement. Note that the 5 tuple might include
masking/wildcarding. The access network admits this flow according
to its local policy and the specific details of the access
technology.
At the edge router (i.e., border node), the flow is admitted, again
with an optional authentication process, possibly involving an
external policy server. Note that the relationship between the PSTN
GW and the policy server and the routers and the policy server is
outside the scope of NSIS. The edge router then admits the flow into
the core of the network, possibly using some aggregation technique.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 34]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
At the interior nodes, the NSIS host-to-host signaling should either
be ignored or invisible as the Edge router performed the admission
control decision to some aggregate.
At the inter-provider router (i.e., border node), again the NSIS
host-to-host signaling should either be ignored or invisible as the
Edge router has performed an admission control decision about an
aggregate across a carrier network.
8.9 PSTN trunking gateway
One of the use cases for the NSIS signaling protocol is the scenario
of interconnecting PSTN gateways with an IP network that supports
QoS.
Four different scenarios are considered here.
1.
In-band QoS signaling is used. In this case the Media Gateway
(MG) will be acting as the QoS Initiator and the Edge Router
(ER) will be the QoS Controller. Hence, the ER should do
admission control (into pre-provisioned traffic trunks) for the
individual traffic flows. This scenario is not further
considered here.
2.
Out-of-band signaling in a single domain, the QoS Controller is
integrated in the MGC. In this case no NSIS protocol is
required.
3.
Out-of-band signaling in a single domain, the QoS Controller is
a separate box. In this case NSIS signaling is used between the
MGC and the QoS Controller.
4.
Out-of-band signaling between multiple domains, the QoS
Controller (which may be integrated in the MGC) triggers the
QoS Controller of the next domain.
When the out-of-band QoS signaling is used the Media Gateway
Controller (MGC) will be acting as the QoS Initiator.
In the second scenario the voice provider manages a set of traffic
trunks that are leased from a network provider. The MGC does the
admission control in this case. Since the QoS Controller acts both
as a QoS Initiator and a QoS Controller, no NSIS signaling is
required. This scenario is shown in figure 1.
+-------------+ ISUP/SIGTRAN +-----+ +-----+
| SS7 network |---------------------| MGC |--------------| SS7 |
+-------------+ +-------+-----+---------+ +-----+
: / : \
: / : \
: / +--------:----------+ \
: MEGACO / / : \ \
: / / +-----+ \ \
: / / | NMS | \ \
: / | +-----+ | \
: : | | :
+--------------+ +----+ | bandwidth pipe (SLS) | +----+
| PSTN network |--| MG |--|ER|======================|ER|-| MG |--
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 35]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
+--------------+ +----+ \ / +----+
\ QoS network /
+-------------------+
Figure 1: PSTN trunking gateway scenario
In the third scenario, the voice provider does not lease traffic
trunks in the network. Another entity may lease traffic trunks and
may use a QoS Controller to do per-flow admission control. In this
case the NSIS signaling is used between the MGC and the QoS
Controller, which is a separate box here. Hence, the MGC acts only
as a QoS Initiator. This scenario is depicted in figure 2.
+-------------+ ISUP/SIGTRAN +-----+ +-----+
| SS7 network |---------------------| MGC |--------------| SS7 |
+-------------+ +-------+-----+---------+ +-----+
: / : \
: / +-----+ \
: / | QC | \
: / +-----+ \
: / : \
: / +--------:----------+ \
: MEGACO : / : \ :
: : / +-----+ \ :
: : / | NMS | \ :
: : | +-----+ | :
: : | | :
+--------------+ +----+ | bandwidth pipe (SLS) | +----+
| PSTN network |--| MG |--|ER|======================|ER|-| MG |--
+--------------+ +----+ \ / +----+
\ QoS network /
+-------------------+
Figure 2: PSTN trunking gateway scenario
In the fourth scenario multiple transport domains are involved. In
the originating network either the MGC may have an overview on the
resources of the overlay network or a separate QoS Controller will
have the overview. Hence, depending on this either the MGC or the
QoS Controller of the originating domain will contact the QoS
Controller of the next domain. The MGC always acts as a QoS
Initiator and may also be acting as a QoS Controller in the first
domain.
8.10 Scenario: Application request end-to-end QoS path from the
network
This is actually the most easy case, nevertheless might be most
often used in terms of number of users. So multimedia application
requests a guaranteed service from an IP network. We assume here
that the application is somehow able to specify the network service.
The characteristics here are that many hosts might do it, but that
the requested service is low capacity (bounded by the access line).
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 36]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
Additionally, we assume no mobility and standard devices.
9 Acknowledgments
Quite a number of people have been involved in the discussion of the
draft, adding some ideas, requirements, etc. We list them without a
guarantee on completeness: Changpeng Fan (Siemens), Krishna Paul
(NEC), Maurizio Molina (NEC), Mirko Schramm (Siemens), Andreas
Schrader (NEC), Hannes Hartenstein (NEC), Ralf Schmitz (NEC),
Juergen Quittek (NEC), Morihisa Momona (NEC), Holger Karl (Technical
University Berlin), Xiaoming Fu (Technical University Berlin), Hans-
Peter Schwefel (Siemens), Mathias Rautenberg (Siemens), Christoph
Niedermeier (Siemens), Andreas Kassler (University of Ulm), Ilya
Freytsis.
Some text and/or ideas for text, requirements, scenarios have been
taken from a draft written by the following authors: David Partain
(Ericsson), Anders Bergsten (Telia Research), Marc Greis (Nokia),
Georgios Karagiannis (Ericsson), Jukka Manner (University of
Helsinki), Ping Pan (Juniper), Vlora Rexhepi (Ericsson), Lars
Westberg (Ericsson), Haihong Zheng (Nokia).
10 Author's Addresses
Marcus Brunner (Editor)
NEC Europe Ltd.
Network Laboratories
Adenauerplatz 6
D-69115 Heidelberg
Germany
E-Mail: brunner@ccrle.nec.de (contact)
Robert Hancock, Eleanor Hepworth
Roke Manor Research Ltd
Romsey, Hants, SO51 0ZN
United Kingdom
E-Mail: [robert.hancock|eleanor.hepworth]@roke.co.uk
Cornelia Kappler
Siemens AG
Berlin 13623
Germany
E-Mail: cornelia.kappler@icn.siemens.de
Hannes Tschofenig
Siemens AG
Otto-Hahn-Ring 6
81739 Munchen
Germany
Email: Hannes.Tschofenig@mchp.siemens.de
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 37]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDIN
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Open Issues/To Dos
1) (OPEN) add Scenarios
Do we need to add, remove, or change the scenarios?
- added scenario on QoS signalling between PSTN gateways and
backbone routers
- added: Application request end-to-end QoS path from the network
We can what ever scenario we want. The more the better to understand
the issues. Nevertheless, we have to take care that we are future
prove as well.
2) (OPEN) Sender/receiver initiation
What is the requirement concerning data sender or data receiver or
both to initiate a QoS request.
- does it matter who pays?
- terminology text added
open issue, what is a potential req (currently we say "both must be
possible")
3) (CLOSED) Draft organization
The proposed changes include
- put all the scenarios into an appendix
- In Section 6 add text describing 3 different "parts of the
network"
-Host to first hop
-access network
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 38]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
-core networks
better names are welcome, but I don't want to be religious about
it
- Prioritize the requirements according to the "parts of the
network" (This means the the tables in Section 6 of the current
draft will get three colums with the MUST, SHOULDs, and MAYs for
each requirement
4) (OPEN) MUSTs, SHOULDs, MAY needs discussion
5) (CLOSED) Framework text.
The figures have been removed, because they seamed to be misleading.
the text has been revisited. I regard the issue closed until we have
a clear picture about what the NSIS framework draft is about.
6) (CLOSED) The requirement organization
I heard some voices on the list that the grouping should be more
along the lines of host-to-edge, edge to edge etc.
So far I have not changed it, because I though that the requirements
heavily depend on the scenario we are looking at.
closed, by the change in the draft organisation (issue 3)
7) (OPEN) Hemant Chaskar: Section 3.1, items 1) Handoff decision and
2) Trigger sources: The handoff decision and trigger sources should
be out of scope of NSIS. NSIS should rather focus only on
"establishing" QoS along the packet path after handoff.
needs more WG discussion, potentially even cross-WG
8) (OPEN) bi-directional data path setup with one QoS request
I have not seen consensus on whether to require bi-directional data
path setup with QoS.
- How can we actually perform bi-directional reservations when the
forward and reverse paths are not reciprocal, with respect to
routing topology and routing policy of network domains between
sender and receiver?
- The need to ensure that the return path is the same as the
forwarding path is one of the problems with RSVP, particularly in a
mobile environment.
9) (CLOSED) Potential requirement: must be implementable in user
space (on end hosts)
has not been included in the req list because it seams to be
implementation specific.
10) (CLOSED) Potential requirement: must provide support for
globally defined services as well as private services (Ruediger)
replaced by issue 17 and 18, closed
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 39]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
11) (CLOSED) Potential requirement: Flexibility in the granularity
of reservation (I don't remember who brought it up, but I assume it
refers to the flexibility in terms of what size the flow has. Where
size can be bandwidth etc.)
The assumption that QoS classes as well as service definitions are
out of scope for this draft, also the flexibility is.
12) (CLOSED) text replacing scalability reqs
"The nsis architecture should give the ability to constrain the load
(CPU load, memory space, signaling bandwidth consumption and
signaling intensity) on devices where it is needed. This can be
achieved by many different methods, for example message aggregation,
by ignoring signaling message, header compression or minimizing
functionality. The architecture may choose any of these methods as
long as the requirement is met."
Editor: added the above text, but did not remove scalability reqs
13) (CLOSED) add operator req "Ability to assign transport quality
to signaling messages"
"The nsis architecture should allow the network operator to assign
the nsis protocol messages a certain transport quality. As signaling
opens up for possible denial-of-service attacks, this requirement
gives the network operator a mean, but also the obligation, to
trade-off between signaling latency and the impact (from the
signaling messages) on devices within his/her network. From protocol
design this requirement states that the protocol messages should be
detectable, at least where the control and assignment of the
messages priority is done."
text has been added
14) (OPEN, dependend on resolution of bi-directional) proposal to
add "support grouping of microflows (possibly only for feedback)"
"As a consequence of the optimization for the interactive multimedia
services, the signaling should allow one unique request for several
micro flows having the same origination and destination IP
addresses. This is usually the case for multimedia SIP calls where
the voice and video micro flows follow the same path. This grouping
of requests allows optimization of the QoS processing. Note that
this may be detrimental for the call setup time. The use of grouping
for microflows may be restricted to teardown and/or notification
messages when call setup time is a concern."
open issue: first resolve the bi-directional issue which is somewhat
related, because it seams to be an optimization as well
15) (CLOSED) Support for preemption of sessions
-might play into the fault/ error handling case
-is regarded as service-specific, whether existing sessions can be
pre-empted
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 40]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
Conclusion: it is network policy to determine how to do pre-emption,
not a protocol issue.
16) (OPEN) Req: 5.1.9 change provisioning into better term, since
different people understand different thing with provisioning
open action for Anders
17) (CLOSED) add assumption that QoS classes/service definitions are
already known to all the parties involved in signaling before hand
(before a signalling session even starts
added text in Section 4.1
18) (CLOSED) add exclusion of methods, protocols, and ways to
express QoS
Even so, this might be covered by saying that we are independent of
QoS classes and service description etc. (see issue 17), I added two
points to the exclusion Section 4.2.
Implications: issue 20, 23,
19) (CLOSED) remove req 5.2.5 IP fragmentation
20) (CLOSED) remove req 5.3.2 Ability to signal life-time of a
reservation
is regarded service-specific therefore part of the service
description
added some reservation life time text service description assumption
text and removed the req
21) (CLOSED) remove req 5.5.4 Aggregation method specification
Concerns
-QI not able to know the impact of aggregation
-to far down the implementation/ service definition road
-leave it to the provider how a service is realized
removed
22) (CLOSED) remove 5.3.7 Automatic notification on available
resources not been granted before
regarded to complex and is heavily dependend on the service
description
removed
23) (CLOSED) remove 5.5.3 Simple mapping to lower-layer QoS
provisioning parameters
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 41]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
this heavily depends on service definition and therefore is out of
scope of this document
removed
24) (CLOSED) Replacing req 5.3.6 "Feedback about the actually
received level of QoS guarantees" with two requirements: 1) the
feedback of a request MUST include yes and no (MUST respond yes or
no) 2) in case of no it MAY include an opaque service-specific
information about what would be possible
It is still only one requirement, but the text has been replaced.
25) (CLOSED) remove req 5.10.3 Combination with Mobility management
However the integration should not be a priori excluded, there is
explicitly no statemant about independence of mobility management.
There is more discussion for the mobility case needed anyway.
26) (OPEN) interaction of NSIS with seamoby (context transfer and
CAR discovery)
27) (CLOSED) remove req 5.5.10 QoS conformance specification
Motivation: this heavily depends on the service definition and is
therefore out of scope
removed
28) (OPEN) new requirement on "asynchronous events from the network"
The content of the message might be very service specific, but the
protocol support for asynchronous events from the network might be a
valuable requirement.
29) (OPEN) NSIS in case of handovers
30) (CLOSED) remove 5.1.7 Avoid modularity with large overhead (in
various dimensions)
removed because it seams to be obvious
31) (CLOSED) remove 5.1.8 Possibility to use the signaling protocol
for existing local technologies
It is contradictory to 5.1.9 and the intention behind the
requirement is covered by the requierement that the QoS controller
can be placed wherever needed.
32) (CLOSED) add assumption: there are means for discovery of nsis
entities in order to know the signaling peers (solutions include
static configuration, or automatically discovered etc.)
33) (OPEN) add req " highest possible network utilization"
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 42]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
"There are networking environments that require high network
utilization for various reasons, and the signaling protocol should
to its best ability support high resource utilization while
maintaining appropriate QoS.
In networks where resources are very expensive (as is the case for
many wireless networks), efficient network utilization is of
critical financial importance. On the other hand there are other
parts of the network where high utilization is not required.
"
34) (OPEN)_difference between "UMTS access scenario" "cellular
network scenario", and "Wired part of wireless network" (Section
8.2, 8.3, and 8.4)
currently all three are included
what are the essential issues?
35) (OPEN) difference between the two PSTN gateway scenarios
(Section 8.8 and 8.9)
currently both are included
what are the essential issues?
36) req "Independence of reservation identifier"
issue here is that this might only be valuable in mobile
environments, and complicate the protocol for other environemnts.
there related issues (37,38,
37) ownership of a reservation
The issue here is that a known party owns reservations done in the
network. (which might include that the party also pays). The
question arose who is allowed to tear-down, receive asynchronous
notifications in case of network initiated tear-down, etc.
This also relates to how certain service granted is
named/identified.
38) (OPEN) definition of security threats
39) (OPEN) simplify security requirements section
40) (OPEN) add mobility related requirements
41) (CLOSED) remove req 5.5.1 Mutability information on parameters
removed because it is service-specific
42) (OPEN) add an assumption that QoS nmonitoring is application-
specific and with it out of scope of the WG
43) (OPEN) asynchronous notification of QoS Initiator, Controller,
Receiver, there are security issues related. Basically, an ownership
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 43]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
issue. Nevertheless, an asynch notifcation in case of an error,
network failure etc. is specifically in areas, where longer lived
sessions are setup, essential in order to notify upper layes
(appluications etc. as well.
44) (OPEN) req 5.1.2 resource availability info on request come back
to it as soon as we have a more clear idea about service description
issue
45) (OPEN) 5.3.4 Possibility for automatic re-setup of resources
after recovery
- more thoughts in failure conditions potentially
- better text
- operation under overload
plays into issue 46)
46) (OPEN) we need multiple scenario for failure and recovery cases
to derive requirements. Or a list failre cases might be a start as
well.
47) (OPEN) traffic engineering and route pinning
I assume this would result in operational type of requirements
Opinions on that?
48) (CLOSED) req 5.5.5 remove Multiple levels of detail
"The QSC should allow for multiple levels of detail in description.
(Motivation: someone interpreting the request can tune its own level
of complexity by going down to more or less levels of detail. A
lightweight implementation within the core could consider only the
coarsest level.)"
removed, because it is service-specific
49) (CLOSED) remove req 5.5.9 Signaling must support quantitative,
qualitative, and relative QoS specifications
removed because it is service-specific
50) (CLOSED) req 5.5.6 remove Ranges in specification
The QSC should allow for specification of minimum required QoS
and/or desirable QoS. (Motivation: The QoS Service Classes should
allow for ranges to be indicated, to minimize negotiation latency
and suppress error notifications during handover events.)
removed, is service specific
51) (OPEN) remove 5.1.6 Avoid duplication of [sub]domain signaling
functions
we might to use the text somewhere else
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 44]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
52) (OPEN) New requirement: interaction with policy
this most likely is covered by an opaque token for authentication
dependency on security changes
53) (OPEN) add req 5.1.16. of draft-partain-...-00 Error handling
and redundancy considerations
Border nodes should be able to notify the users if there is an error
inside the network. There are two types of network errors:
- Recoverable errors: this type error can be locally repaired
by the network nodes. The network nodes do not have to
notify the users of the error immediately.
- Unrecoverable errors: the network nodes cannot handle this
type of error, and have to notify the users as soon as
possible.
Comments:
1) notification of user in case of unrecoverable errors (has been
done by notification req, or will be done by asynch notification
2) recoverable error (might need to be added) req 5.3.4 is going
into this direction
3) what does this mean for different parts of the network
in different parts of the network)
4) hop-by-hop? OR right to the end?
54) (CLOSED) add req 5.1.17. to assumption "Identification
requirement"
assumption say that the discovery of QI, QC, QR is out-of-scope of
the draft
55) (OPEN) 5.2.2. Allow local QoS information exchange between two
border nodes
"The QoS signalling protocol must be able to exchange local QoS
information between edge nodes. Local QoS information might, for
example, be IP addresses, severe congestion notification,
notification of succesful or erroneous processing of QoS signalling
messages at one border node.
In some domains, the NSIS QoS signalling protocol MAY carry
identification of the ingress and egress edge between the ingress-
egress edges. However, the identification of edges should not be
visible to the end host and only applies within one QoS
administrative domain.
"
Comments:
- service mapping is more service-specific (layering,tunneling)
- the scenario to look at is a complicated service description -> in
part of the network you want to change the message to something more
easy, and at the other end go back to the more complicated part.
-QI being everywhere might be enough
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 45]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
-and we have already a requirement saying that intermediate node
MUST be able to add/remove domain-specific information to/from
signaling messages
56) (CLOSED) add req 5.3.1.3 of draft-partain-..-00
-already added a req to the scalability section (issue ???), which
has been provided by Anders
57) (OPEN) potentially better title for text from issue 56) e.g.
(?minimal impact on core?)
58) (CLOSED) add req 5.3.2 from draft-partain-...-00
- the fast establishment req is handled by the low setup latency
req, and the scalability in handover req
- added the text to the teminal mobility scenario
59) (OPEN) add req: ability to deal with severe congestion (req
5.3.4 of draft-partain-..-00
issues are:
- the use in highly utilized networks
- deos it belong to failure recovery (I would assume from a service
point of view this is failure
- hop by hop problem (issue from Jorge)
60) (OPEN) add req 5.4.3. from draft-partain-...-00 "Allow efficient
QoS re-establishment after handover"
"Handover is an essential function in wireless networks. After
handover, QoS may need to be completely or partially re-established
due to route changes. The re-establishment may be requested by the
mobile node itself or triggered by the access point that the mobile
node is attached to. In the first case, the QoS signalling should
allow efficient QoS re-establishment after handover. Re-
establishment of QoS after handover should be as quick as possible
so that the mobile node does not experience service interruption or
QoS degradation. The re-establishment should be localized, and not
require end-to-end signalling, if possible."
most likely it is already cover, please check again, whether there
is something missing
61) (OPEN) add req: 6.1.8 from draft-bucheli-...-00 on multicast
"Multicast consideration should not impact the protocol complexity
for unicast flows. Multicast support is not considered as a
priority, because the targeted interactive multimedia services are
mainly unicast. For this reason, if considered in the solution,
multicast should not bring complexity in the unicast scenario."
Opinions?
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 46]
Requirements for QoS Signaling Protocols April 2002
Brunner, et al. Informational [Page 47]