Internet Research Task Force                                  M. Eder
   Internet Draft                                             H. Chaskar
   Document: draft-irtf-smrg-ipsmf-01.txt                          Nokia
                                                                  S. Nag
   Category: Experimental                                 November  2001



                 IP Service Management in the QoS Network


   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
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   Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001).  All Rights Reserved.

   Abstract

   The guiding principles in the design of IP network management were
   simplicity and no centralized control.  The best effort service
   paradigm was a result of the original management principles and the
   other way around.  New methods to distinguish the service given to
   one set of packets or flows relative to another are well underway.
   However, as IP networks evolve the management approach of the past
   may not apply to the QoS-capable network envisioned by some for the
   future.  We examine some of the areas of impact that QoS is likely
   to have on management and look at some questions that remain to be
   addressed.


IP Service Management in the QoS Network                 November 2002


   1. Introduction

   Simplicity above all else was one of the guiding principles in the
   design of IP networks. However, as IP networks evolve, the concept
   of service in IP is also evolving, and the strategies of the past
   may not apply to the full-service QoS-capable network envisioned by
   some for the future.  Within the IP community, their exists a good
   deal of impetus for the argument that if the promise of IP is to be
   fulfilled, networks will need to offer an increasing variety of
   services.  The definition of these new services in IP has resulted
   in a need for reassessment of the current control mechanism utilized
   by IP networks.  Efforts to provide mechanisms to distinguish the
   service given to one set of packets or flows relative to another are
   well underway, yet many of the support functions necessary to
   exploit these mechanisms are limited in scope and a complete
   framework is non-existent.  This is complicated by the fact that
   many of these new services will also demand some form of billing
   framework in addition to a control one, something radically new for
   IP.

   This paper intends to evaluate the network and service management
   issues that will need to be addressed, if the IP networks of the
   future are going to offer more than just the traditional best effort
   service in any kind of significant way.

   2. Background

   The task of defining a management framework for QoS will be
   difficult due to the fact that these new services represent a
   radical departure from the best effort service model that was at the
   core of IP in the past, and had a clear design strategy to have
   simplicity take precedence over everything else [1].  This
   philosophy was nowhere more apparent than in the network and service
   management area for IP [2].  Proposed changes to support a variety
   of QoS features will impact the existing control structure in a very
   dramatic way.  Compounding the problem is the lack of understanding
   of what makes up a "service" in IP [3].  Unlike some other network
   technologies, in IP it does not suffice to limit the scope of
   service management simply to end-to-end connectivity, but the
   transport service offered to packets and the way the transport is
   used must also be covered.  If the available transport services in
   IP expand, the result will be the further expansion of what is
   considered a service.  The now de-facto inclusion of WEB services in
   the scope of IP service, which is remarkable given that the WEB did
   not even exist when IP was first invented, illustrates this
   situation well.  This phenomenon can be expected to increase with
   the current trend towards moving network decision points towards the
   boundary of the network and, as a result, closer to the applications
   and customers.  Additionally, the argument continues over the need
   for QoS in IP networks at all.  New technologies based on fiber and
   wavelength-division multiplexing have many people convinced that
   bandwidth will be so inexpensive it is not going to be necessary to
   have an explicit control framework for providing QoS

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   differentiation.  However uneconomical it is to engineer a network
   for peak usage, a major argument in this debate certainly is the
   cost of developing operational support systems for a QoS network and
   deploying them in the existing networks.  Just the fact that
   customers might be willing to pay for additional service may not be
   justification for implementing sweeping architectural changes that
   could seriously affect the Internet as it is known today.  The IP
   community must be very concerned that the equality that
   characterized the best effort Internet may be sacrificed in favor of
   a service that has a completely different business model. If the
   core network started to provide services that generated more
   revenue, its could easily come at the expense of the less revenue
   generating best effort service.

   3. IP Management Standardization

   Management standardization efforts in the IP community have
   traditionally been concerned with what is commonly referred to as
   "element management" or "device management".  Recently, new efforts
   in IP management have added the ability to address service issues
   and to look at the network in more abstract terms. These efforts
   which included a logical representation of services as well as the
   representation of resources in the network, combined with the notion
   of a user of a service, has made possible the much talked about
   concept of 'policy'.  Notable among these efforts are the Policy
   work in the IETF and the DMTF work on CIM and DEN.  Crucial elements
   of the service management framework are coming into perspective, but
   point to a trend in IP that is a quite radical departure from the
   control mechanisms of the past.  As the service model evolves from
   being what was sufficient to support best effort to being able to
   support variable levels of service, a trend towards a centralized
   management architecture has become quite apparent.

   This is becoming increasingly apparent for two reasons.  QoS
   mechanisms need network wide information [4], and for them to
   succeed, they must not require a tremendous amount of support from
   the core network.  It is becoming increasingly accepted that only at
   the edge of the network will there be sufficient resources to
   provide the mechanisms necessary to admit and control various QoS
   flows.

   4. Telecommunications Service Management

   One place to start an effort to define service management in IP
   networks is by looking at what was been done previously in
   telecommunications networks.  The telecommunications standards have
   not been very successful in defining an industry accepted service
   management framework even in an environment in which the service is
   fairly constrained.  Yet regulation has made it necessary for
   network operators to open their networks sufficiently to allow for
   multiple vendor participation in providing the service.  This
   indicates that some formalized boundaries exist or the markets are
   sufficiently large to justify the development of interfaces.
   International telecommunications management standards look at the

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   complete management problem by dividing it into separate but highly
   related layers.  Much of the terminology used to describe the
   management problem in IP has diffused from the telecommunications
   standards [5].  These standards were designed specifically to
   address telecommunications networks, and it is not clear how
   applicable they will be to IP networks.  Service management is
   defined in terms of the set of services found in telecommunications
   networks and the management framework reflects the hierarchical
   centralized control structure of these networks.  The framework for
   service management is based on the Telecommunications Management
   Network (TMN) layered approach to management.  Current IP standards
   are heavily weighted towards the element management layer and
   especially towards the gathering of statistical data with a
   decentralized approach being emphasized.  In TMN a dependency exists
   between layers and clear functions at their boundaries are defined.
   To what extent service management, as defined in the TMN standards,
   can be applied to IP which is lacking a network layer that supports
   a Logical Layered Architecture [5] must be further investigated.

   TMN concepts must be applied carefully to IP networks because
   fundamental differences exist.  Control of IP networks is highly
   distributed especially in the network layer.  Management is non-
   hierarchical and decentralized with many peer-to-peer relationships.
   A formal division of management into layers, where management
   dependencies exist at the borders of these layers, may not be
   applicable to IP. Any effort to define service management in IP must
   be constantly vigilant that it does not assume the
   telecommunications concepts can be applied directly to IP networks.
   The most basic abstraction of the network management problem into
   element, network, and service management has as its origins in the
   telecommunications industry's standardization work and the IP
   management framework might not have made even these distinctions if
   it where not for the telecommunications legacy.

   5. IP Service Management: Problem Statement

   In defining the Service Management Framework for IP, the nature of
   services that are going to need to be managed must be addressed.
   Traditionally network management frameworks consist of two parts, an
   informational framework and the framework to distribute information
   to the network devices.  A very straight forward relationship exists
   in that the distribution framework must support the informational
   one, but also more subtle relationships exists with what the
   informational and distribution frameworks imply about the management
   of the system.  The informational framework appears to be the easier
   problem to address and the one that is principally being focused on
   by the IP community.

   Efforts like the DMTF CIM are currently trying to define network,
   and to a lesser extent service, information models.  These efforts
   show a surprising similarity to those of the telecommunications
   industry to define information models [6].  What has not emerged is
   a clear framework for defining how the information models are to be
   used for network management and how the information gets

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   disseminated in a way that meets the requirements of a network
   management system.

   The number of elements to be managed in these networks will require
   this information to be highly distributed.  Highly distributed
   directories would be a prime candidate for the information that is
   of a static nature.  For information that is of a dynamic nature the
   problem becomes far more complex and has yet to be satisfactorily
   addressed.  Policy management is a logical extension of having
   distributed directories services available in the network.  The IETF
   and DMTF are looking to Policy management to be a framework to
   handle certain service management issues.  Much of the current
   policy efforts are focused on access and traffic prioritization
   within a particular network element and only for a single
   administrative domain [7].  Classifying traffic flows and enforcing
   policies at the edge with the intent of focusing on admission
   issues, without addressing the end-to-end nature of the problem,
   leaves some of the most complex service management issues still
   unanswered.  Providing a verifiable commodity level of service, in
   IP, will effect every facet of the network and a management solution
   to the problem will have to address the scale and the dynamics by
   which it operates.

  5.1 Common Management Domain

   Standardization efforts need to concentrate on the management
   problems that are multi-domain in character.  The test for multi-
   domain often centers around there being a many-to-one or a one-to-
   many relationship requiring the involvement of two or more distinct
   entities.  Domains could reflect the administrative domain, routing
   domain, or include agreements between domains.  Unlike the
   telecommunications network in which traffic traverses only a
   relatively small number of domains, traffic in IP networks is likely
   to traverse numerous domains under separate administrative control.
   Further complicating the situation is, that unlike the
   telecommunications network, many of these domains will be highly
   competitive in nature, offering and accommodating varying service
   level agreements.  Telecommunications traffic, even with
   deregulation, passes from the access providers network to a core
   network and then, if it is an international call, across
   international boundaries.  The number of domains is relative to IP
   small, the service supported in each is virtually identical, and yet
   each domains is likely to have a different business model from the
   other.  In contrast IP will have many domains, many services, and
   domains will likely be highly competitive.  To be successful IP will
   need to model the domain problem in a way that reduces the
   complexity that arises from having many independent networks each
   having a different service model being responsible for a single
   flow.

  5.2 Service Management Business Processes

   A service management framework must address the business processes
   that operate when providing a service.  A service can be separated

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   into two fundamental divisions.  The first is the definition of the
   service and the second is the embodiment of the service.  While this
   division may seem intuitive, a formal process that addresses these
   two aspects of a service needs to be in place if management of the
   service is to be actually realized.

   In specifying a service it must be possible to map it onto the
   capabilities of the underlying network architecture.  The service
   needs to be specified in an unambiguous way so that mechanisms can
   be put in place to enable the control of the service.  It can be a
   useful tool to view the relationship of the definition of a service
   to an instance of that service to the relationship between the
   definition of an object to the instantiation of that object in
   object oriented modeling.  As networks evolve it is going to be
   necessary to logically describe the network capabilities to the
   service and because IP networks are so fragmented specific service
   classifications will need to be made available that transcend the
   individual regions and domains.  An interface that defines and
   controls the network capabilities, abstracted for the service
   perspective, allows for the administration of the network by the
   service management systems.

   Services are often designed with management capabilities specific to
   them.  These services have tended to not rely on the service aspects
   of the network, but only on its transport capabilities.  As services
   become more dependent on the network, Management over a shared
   framework will be required.  Operators have recognized the business
   need to allow the user to have as much control over the management
   of their own services as possible.  IP services will be highly
   diverse and customizable further necessitating that the management
   of the service be made available to the user to the extent possible.
   In the IP environment where they may be many separate entities
   required to provide the service this will create a significant
   management challenge.

  5.3 Billing and Security

   Paramount to the success of any service is determining how that
   service will be billed.  The process of billing must take place at
   the service inception.  It is here that the network support
   necessary for billing should be addressed.  Analogously, security
   must also be addressed in the most early stages of the service
   definition.  It is not practical to assume that the billing and the
   security services will be hosted by the same provider as the service
   itself or that it will be possible to have the billing and security
   functions specifically designed for every service.  These functions
   will have to be a generic part of the network.

  5.4 Standards

   Given the limited success of the telecommunications standards bodies
   efforts to formalize the relationship between different management
   support functions it is highly suspect that such efforts would
   succeed in IP networks which have an even more diverse concept of

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   network and services.  If the IP network is to be made up of peer
   domains of equal dominion it will be necessary to have management
   functionality that is able to traverse these domains.  Of course the
   perspective of where management responsibility lies is largely
   dependent on the reference point.  A centric vantage point indicates
   responsibility shared equally among different domains.  From within
   any particular domain management responsibility exists within that
   domain and that domain only.  For a management framework to succeed
   in IP networks logical management functions will have to be
   identified along with an extremely flexible definition language to
   define the interface to these management functions.  The more the
   management functionality will have to cross boundaries of
   responsibility, the more the network management functions have to be
   distributed throughout the network.

   5.5 Core Inter-domain Functions

   The service management paradigm for IP must address management from
   a perspective that is a combination of technical solutions as well
   as a formula for representing vendor business relationships.
   Currently services that need support between domains require that
   the service level agreements (SLAs) be negotiated between the
   providers.  At some point these agreements will likely become
   unmanageable, if the number of agreements becomes very large and/or
   the nature of the agreements is highly variable. This will result in
   their being sufficient need for standardization or regulation to
   control these agreements resulting in it becoming no longer
   acceptable to make individual arrangements.

   Bandwidth Brokers have been conceived as a method for dealing with
   many of the problems between the domains relating to traffic from a
   business perspective.  The premise of the Bandwidth Brokers is to
   insure agreement between the network domains with regards to
   traffic, but security and billing issues, that are not likely to be
   as quantifiable, will also need to be addressed.  Service providers
   have traditionally been reluctant to use bandwidth broker or SLA
   types of functions since they consider that such tools expose their
   weaknesses to competitors and customers.  While this is not a
   technical problem, it does pose a real practical problem in managing
   a service effectively.

   Looking at the basic requirements of the QoS network of the future
   two competing philosophies become apparent.  The network providers
   are interested in having more control over the traffic to allow them
   to choose what traffic gets priority especially in a congested
   environment.  Users desire the ability to identify a path that has
   the characteristics very similar to a leased line [8].  In either
   situation as IP bandwidth goes from being delivered on an equal
   basis, to being delivered based on a particular authorities formula,
   there will become a need to provide authentication and validation to
   verify who gets what service.  This will include the ability to
   measure that the service specified is being provided, to define the
   exact parameters of the service, and to verify that only an
   authorized level of service is being provided.

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   Some of the earlier work on an architectural framework for mixed
   traffic networks has suggested that the only method that will work
   between administrative domains is that of bilateral agreement [9].
   Multilateral agreements may indeed be complex to administer, but
   another type of multilateral agreements exists that is not so
   complex.  This is the multilateral agreements mandated by means of
   national or international regulation.  Bilateral agreements will not
   scale well and if the traffic needs to traverse many administrative
   domains it will be hard to quantify the end-to-end service being
   provided. Instability in the ownership and administration of domains
   will also limit the usability of bilateral agreements in predicting
   end-to-end service.  Only through a regulated process will it be
   possible to eliminate the effects competitive pressures will have on
   these types of agreements and make it possible to get a truly open
   environment.  Much pressure of a non-technical nature exists today
   to discourage this scenario.  If traffic agreements between the
   boundaries of networks is not mandated or standardized a continuing
   consolidation of network providers will result.  Providers unable to
   induce other providers to pair with them will lose business if QoS
   networks become commonplace.  This would be especially visible for
   small and midsize service providers who would be pressured to
   combine with a larger provider or face not being able to offer the
   highest levels of service.

   5.6 Network Services

   The majority of current activity on higher level management
   functions for IP networks have been restricted to the issue of
   providing QoS.  Many service issues still remain to be resolved with
   respect to the current best effort paradigm and many more can be
   expected if true QoS support is realized.  Authentication,
   authorization and accounting services still inadequate for the
   existing best effort service will need additional work to support
   QoS services.

   It is reasonable that services can be classified into application
   level services and transport level services.  Transport services are
   the services that the network provides independent of any
   application. These include services such as Packet Forwarding and
   Routing, QoS differentiation, Traffic Engineering etc.  These might
   also include such functions as security (Ipsec) and Directory
   services.  In IP networks a distinction is often made between QoS
   transport services that are viewed as end-to-end (RSVP) or per-hop
   (Diffserv).  From a service management perspective the two are very
   similar.  Transport level services are not very flexible, requiring
   application level services to fit into the transport framework.  An
   application that needs additional transport level services will need
   to be a mass-market application where the investment in new
   infrastructure can be justified.  Because of the effort in altering
   transport services, applications that need new ones will have a
   longer time to market and the effort and cost to develop a framework
   necessary to support new transport services should not be
   underestimated.

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   Application level services are those specific to the application.
   Many service management functions occur between the application
   supplier and the application consumer which require no knowledge or
   support by the existing network.  By keeping service management
   functions at this level time to market and costs can be greatly
   reduced.  The disadvantages are that many applications need the same
   functionality causing inefficient use of the network resources.
   Services supplied by the network are able to be built more robustly
   and can provide additional functionality, by virtue of having access
   to information that applications can not, providing additional
   benefit over application level services.  An example of an
   application level service that could benefit from a Network service
   is the AAA paradigm for Web based E-Commerce which is largely
   restricted to user input of credit card information.  Sometimes
   application level service requirements have the disadvantages of
   both transport service and application service level.  For instance,
   in IP telephony, this may include services provided by a gateway or
   other network device specific to IP telephony to support such
   services as call forwarding or call waiting.  The mass appeal of IP
   telephony makes it possible to suggest considerable infrastructure
   changes, but the nature of this kind of change has contributed to
   the slow penetration of IP telephony applications.

   6. A New Service Management Architecture

   An overview of some of the problems in the previous sections shows a
   need for a consolidated framework.  Transport level QoS will demand
   traffic engineering that has a view of the complete network that is
   far more comprehensive than what is currently available via the
   Routing protocols.  This view will need to including dynamic network
   congestion information as well as connectivity information.  The
   current existing best-effort transport control may become more of a
   hindrance to new services and may be of questionable value if the IP
   network will truly become a full service QoS network.  Both IntServ
   and DiffServ QoS schemes require network provisioning to adequately
   support QoS within a particular domain and agreements for traffic
   traversing domains.  Policy management, object oriented information
   models, and domain gateways are leading to a need for a more
   centralized management structure that provides full service
   throughout the network and across domains. Given the probable cost
   and complexity of such a system failure to come up with a standard,
   even if it is a de facto standard, will have serious implications
   for the Internet in the future.

   For the current trends in QoS to succeed, there will need to be
   harmonization across the new and existing control structures.  By
   utilizing a structure very similar to the existing routing control
   structures, it should be possible develop functionality, not in the
   data path, that can allocate traffic within a domain and use inter-
   domain signaling to distribute between domains.  Additional
   functionality, necessary to support QoS-like authorization and
   authentication functions for edge devices admitting QoS traffic and
   administering and allocating traffic between administrative domains

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   could also be supported.  While meeting the requirements for a
   bandwidth broker [9], additional functionality of making more
   general policy decisions and QoS routing could also be performed.
   Given that these tasks are interrelated it makes sense to integrate
   them if possible.

   The new service architecture must meet the need for allocating
   traffic within a particular administrative domain and of signaling
   traffic requirements across domains, while at the same time it must
   provide the same functionality as what currently happens in a
   routing domain.  This could be accomplished by redirecting routing
   messages to a central function which would then calculate paths
   based on the entire network and the transport requirements.  Across
   domains communication would occur as necessary to establish and
   maintain service levels and edge devices would provide traffic
   information to billing interfaces and to verify the service was
   being supplied.  For scalability the central function would need to
   be able to be distributed in large domains.  Routing messages, very
   similar in content to the existing ones, would provide information
   sufficient to support the traffic engineering requirements without
   changing the basic forwarding functions of the devices.  Having
   routes computed centrally would simplify the network devices and
   release them from performing computationally intensive routing
   related tasks.

   Given the scale of the Internet the core can not know about
   individual flow states [10].  At the same time it is not practical
   to expect that the edge devices can determine paths that will
   optimally utilize the network resources.  As the information needed
   to forward traffic through the network becomes related to complex
   parameters that can not be determined on a per hop basis and have
   nothing to do with the forwarding of packets, which routers do best,
   it makes sense to move the function of determining routes to network
   components specifically designed for the task so it is no longer a
   function of routers.  In a QoS network routing decisions become
   increasingly dependent on information not easily discernable from
   the data that routers can logically share between themselves.  This
   will necessitate the need for additional functionality to determine
   the routing of data through the network and further suggests that
   all the information needed to allow a router to forward packets
   might not be better provided external to the routers functions.

   At the edges of the network where the traffic is admitted it will be
   necessary to have mechanisms that will insure the traffic is within
   the bounds of what has been specified.  To achieve this it will be
   necessary to buffer and control the input traffic.  Second the
   traffic would need to be marked so the other network elements are
   able to identify that this is preferred traffic without having to
   keep flow information.  Conversely, a path could be chosen for the
   traffic that was dedicated to the level of service being requested
   that was per flow based.  A combination of the two would be possible
   that would allow a reservation of resources that would accommodate
   multiple flows.  They are all more similar than they first appear
   from a management perspective and are really identical in that one

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   method represents just a virtual path based on the handling of the
   packets by the device in the network and the second would be a pre-
   reserved path through the network.  Existing best effort routing
   will not provide the optimum routes for these new levels of service
   and to achieve this it would be necessary to have either routing
   protocols that supported optimum path discovery or mechanisms to
   configure paths necessary to support the required services.  In
   addition to specific service parameters reliability will also be a
   potential service discriminator.  It is unlikely using traditional
   path determination methods that in the event of a failure a new path
   could be determined sufficiently quickly to maintain the agreed
   service level.  This would imply the need for multiple path
   reservations in some instances.  Because Per flow reservations are
   too resource intensive virtual trunks would provide a good way to
   reduce the amount of management traffic by reserving blocks of
   capacity and would provide stability in the event of a failure in
   the resource reservation and route selection functions.

   There are implications of providing shaping at the network
   boundaries.  Shaping would include both rate and burst parameters as
   well as possible delay aspects.  Having to provision services with
   specific qualities would present both major business and technical
   problems.  By definition, packet data is bursty in nature and there
   exist periods of idleness during the session.  It is not practical
   to expect a consumer paying a premium for a service would not check
   that the service was truly available.  Such a service model seems to
   be filled with peril for the existing best effort Internet, because
   any significant amount of bandwidth that was reserved for exclusive
   use or a high priority flow that was artificially kept constant to
   verify the availability of a contracted service, would not be
   available for best effort data.

   With respect to traffic within the network itself there will be the
   need to pre-configure routes and to provide the ability to have
   routes be dynamically configured.  Some of the problems with pre-
   configured traffic include it's basic inconsistency with the way
   traffic is currently engineered through the Internet and the
   difficulty in developing arrangements between administrative
   domains.  The current Internet has been developed with one of the
   most egalitarian yet simplistic methods of sharing bandwidth.
   Supporting the existing best effort service, in an unbiased way,
   while at the same time providing for other classes of service could
   potentially add a tremendous amount of complexity to the QoS scheme.
   On the other hand, if the reserved bandwidth is not shared it could
   result in a significant impact on the availability of the bandwidth
   in the Internet as we know it today.  QoS could potentially
   contribute more to their being insufficient bandwidth, by reserving
   bandwidth within the network that can not be used by other services,
   even though it can be expected that this bandwidth will be
   underutilized for much of the time.  Add to that the motivation of
   the service providers in wanting to sell commodity bandwidth, and
   there could be tremendous pressures on the availability of Internet
   bandwidth.


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   Current work within the IP community on defining mechanisms to
   provide QoS have centered on a particular few architectures and a
   handful of new protocols.  In the following sections, we will
   examine some of the particular issues with regards to the current IP
   community efforts as they relate to the previous discussions.  It is
   not the goal of this paper to serve as a tutorial on these efforts
   but rather to identify some of the support issues related to using
   particular technologies that support some form of classifiable
   service within an IP network.

   7. The DiffServ Architecture

   The DiffServ management problem is two pronged.  First there is the
   management within the administrative domain that must be addressed,
   and then the management between the domains.  The second is
   certainly easier to address because there has been little actual
   work on this aspect of the architecture.  What work there has been
   anticipates that service level agreements will be reached between
   the administrative domains, and that end-to-end service will be a
   concatenation of these various service level agreements.  This is
   problematic for many reasons.  From the business perspective, it
   presumes that agreements reached bilaterally could be concatenated
   and continue to provide a level of end-to-end service the customer
   would be willing to pay a premium for.  Problems discussed earlier,
   with trying to maintain large numbers of these agreements between
   competitive networks would also apply, and tend to limit the
   effectiveness of this approach.

   Guaranteeing a class of service on a per hop basis is in no way a
   guarantee of the service on an end-to-end basis.  It is not likely
   that a customer would be willing to pay for an improved level of
   service if it did not include guarantees on the bandwidth and the
   quantitative bounds on delay and error rates guaranteed end-to-end.
   This would necessitate engineering the paths through the network so
   as to achieve a desired end-to-end result.  While it is very likely
   that an initial attempt at providing this kind of service will
   specify only a particular ingress and egress border, for robustness
   and flexibility it will be desirable to have a network that can
   support such service without such limitations.  The Intserv
   approach, as opposed to the DiffServ architecture, would require too
   much per flow and overhead information in the core network and not
   be scaleable [10].  A DiffServ type architecture, with a limited
   number of service classes, could be pre-provisioned, and as network
   circumstances warranted, be modified to support the actual dynamics
   of the network.

   The high level functional requirements for edge routers has been
   quite well defined in the DiffServ architecture, but the true scope
   of the effort to implement this functionality has not been well
   recognized.  While interesting differences exist between the QoS
   architecture of the Internet and the circuit switched network used
   for telecommunications much of the lessons learned in
   telecommunications should, even if they might do little else,
   provide some insight into the level of effort needed to implement

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   these kinds of requirements.  Ironically, given the Internet
   community in the past has rejected the level of standardization that
   was proposed for management of telecommunications networks, it may
   be the full service internet where it becomes actually imperative
   that such requirements be completed if the desired services will
   ever be offered.

   8. Common QoS Functional Areas

   The management of QoS will need to provide functionality to the
   application and/or at the access, at the core, and at the boundaries
   to administrative regions.

   QoS traffic functions will need to include admission control,
   authentication and authorization, and billing.  Verification that
   traffic is within agreed parameters and programmatic interfaces to
   advise when the service is outside the agreed limits.  Interfaces
   that provide service verification, fault notification, and re-
   instantiation and termination will also be necessary.

   Core functions will include traffic engineering, network device
   configuration, fault detection, and recovery.  Network devices will
   need to inform the management system of their available resources
   and the management system will need to tell devices how and where to
   forward data.

   Between administrative regions accounting, service signaling,
   service verification will be needed.  At the administrative
   boundaries of the network functions similar to those provided at the
   edge will be necessary.  Peer entities in different administrative
   domains would signal their needs across the boundary.  Verification
   at the boundary could then occur consistent with the verification at
   the edge.  Actual traffic through the boundaries could be measured
   and billing information be transferred between the domains.  The
   central management function would be responsible for re-routing
   traffic in the event of a failure or to better utilize the existing
   network resources.  Future work in the IRTF Service Management
   Research Group intends to look in detail at these requirements.

   9. Summary

   The paradigm for service management in IP networks has been adopted
   from that of telecommunications networks.  Basic differences between
   the service models of these networks call into question if this is
   realistic.  Further analysis is needed to determine what is the
   proper paradigm for IP service management and to define a common
   vocabulary for it.

   The IP community is currently very active in solving problems
   relating to transport QoS issues.  These activities are illustrated
   by the work of the Diffserv, Intserv, and Policy working groups.  In
   contrast not enough effort is being focused on service issues
   relating to applications.  The present solution is for applications
   to build in their own service management functionality.  This is

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   often an inefficient use of network resources, but more importantly
   will not provide for access to transport level services and the
   functionality that they offer.

   The IP community needs to focus on adding service functionality that
   is flexible enough to be molded to specific application needs, yet
   will have access to service information that will be necessary to
   provide superior application functionality.  Principal needs to be
   addressed relate to developing transport level services for billing
   and security.  Directory services and extending the work done to
   define AAA services are promising starting points for developing
   this needed functionality.

   10. Authors

   Michael Eder
     Nokia Research Center
     5 Wayside Road
     Burlington,  MA  01803
     Phone:    +1-781-993-3636
     Fax:      +1-781-993-1907
     E-mail:   Michael.eder@nokia.com

   Sid Nag
     PO Box 104
     Holmdel, NJ 07733
     Phone:    +1-732-687-1762
     E-mail:   thinker@monmouth.com

   Hemant Chaskar
     Nokia Research Center
     5 Wayside Road
     Burlington,  MA  01803
     Phone:    +1-781-993-3785
     Fax:      +1-781-993-1907
     E-mail:   hemant.chaskar@nokia.com



















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IP Service Management in the QoS Network                 November 2002


   11. References


   [1]   Laurent Mathy, Christopher Edwards, David Hutchison, "The
   Internet: A Global Telecommunications Solution?", IEEE Network,
   July/August 2000.

   [2]   Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, et. al., ôA Brief History of
   the Internetö version 3.31, revised 4 Aug 2000

   [3]   Michael Eder, Sid Nag, Raj Bansal, "Service Management
   Architectures Issues and Review", RFC 3052, January 2001.

   [4]   Yoram Bernet, "The Complementary Roles of RSVP and
   Differentiated Services in the Full-Service QoS Network", IEEE
   Communications Magazine, February 2000

   [5]   Recommendation M.3010 (02/00) - Principles for a
   telecommunications management network, ITU-T

   [6]   Recommendation M.3100 (07/95) - Generic network information
   model, ITU-T

   [7]   B. Moore, et. al., "Policy Core Information Model -- Version
   1 Specification", IETF, RFC 3060, February 2001

   [8]   Van Jacobson, Differentiated Services for the Internet,
   Internet2 Joint Applications/Engineering QoS Workshop

   [9]   K. Nichols, V. Jacobson, L. Zhang, A Two-bit Differentiated
   Services Architecture for the Internet, RFC 2638, July 1999

   [10]  Mankin, A., Baker, F., Braden, R., O'Dell, M., Romanow, A.,
   Weinrib, A. and L. Zhang, "Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP)
   Version 1 Applicability Statement", RFC 2208, September 1997.



















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