ITR: Collaborative Research: Scalable QoS Control for the next Generation Internet

今天的互联网的巨大成功归功于25年前制定的简单的“沙漏”IP网络协议体系结构。近年来，随着网络技术的快速发展和丰富的多媒体内容的爆炸式增长，网络社区发现自己处于一个重要的十字路口：什么应该是下一代互联网体系结构，以控制网络资源，并提供新兴的多媒体应用所需的服务质量（QoS）？有一个多维频谱的可能的方法来提供QoS保证。为下一代互联网选择QoS解决方案将对互联网本身的发展及其所能实现的功能产生重大影响。 做出“正确”的选择需要对QoS控制的可扩展性以及这些控制对QoS配置效率的影响有基本的了解。 建议的研究的目标是开发一个全面的，定量的了解，在各种方法提供可扩展的QoS保证所涉及的基本权衡。为此，研究人员将开发连贯的理论来系统地解决QoS控制中的可扩展性问题。 我们的研究计划大致分为四个领域： 保证流的聚合网络演算：为了彻底理解精细的时间尺度（例如，为了研究网络系统在提供QoS性能保证方面的行为，我们将开发一个聚合网络演算来研究聚合QoS控制机制对数据平面操作的性能和复杂性的影响。该理论是为保证流开发的，保证流要求网络在每个流或聚合级别上提交一定量的资源（例如，带宽和缓冲器），而不管网络拥塞状态。聚合网络演算将提供一个数学框架来量化聚合QoS控制对QoS提供中的基本权衡的影响。它也将产生洞察到可扩展的数据平面QoS控制机制的设计。 响应流的端到端QoS控制：研究人员将开发流体模型来研究聚合QoS控制机制对响应流的端到端性能的影响。响应流通过调整其传输速率来响应网络拥塞的迹象，例如丢失。这些模型将使我们能够更好地理解响应流的行为，如TCP与不同的聚合QoS机制相结合，并为响应流设计端到端的QoS服务。 QoS控制规则和控制平面聚合规则。研究人员将开发QoS控制律，用于捕获网络的慢时间尺度、系统范围的行为，以及聚合规则，以解决聚合QoS控制下控制平面操作的性能和复杂性。这些QoS控制法和聚合规则将引导我们设计用于可扩展控制平面操作的分布式和集中式算法。 可扩展的QoS机制和服务架构作为发展这些理论的一个组成部分，研究人员还将设计有效和可扩展的QoS机制，以及量化和评估各种QoS解决方案的权衡的工具和技术。基于这些努力的结果，研究人员将研究如何将各种QoS解决方案结合起来构建有意义的端到端服务。 该研究将融合正式建模/分析，实验/实施和评估。我们的研究成果将为未来互联网构建可扩展的QoS控制提供理论、设计原则和指导。这反过来又将允许在下一代互联网形成时做出合理和知情的选择。

Today's Internet owes its great success to the simple, "hour-glass" IP network protocol architecture laid out twenty-five years ago. With rapid advances in networking technologies and explosive growth of rich multimedia content in recent years, the networking community finds itself at an important crossroads: what should be the next generation Internet architecture for controlling network resources and provide the quality of service (QoS) needed by emerging multimedia applications? There is a multidimensional spectrum of possible approaches to providing QoS guarantees. The choice of a QoS solution for the next generation Internet will have a substantial impact on both the evolution of the Internet itself, and on what it enables. Making the "right" choices requires the development of a fundamental understanding of the scalability of QoS controls and the impact of these controls on the efficacy of QoS provisioning. The goal of the proposed research is to develop a comprehensive, quantitative understanding of the fundamental trade-offs involved in various approaches toward providing scalable QoS guarantees. To this end, the researchers will develop coherent theories to systematically address the issue of scalability in QoS controls. Our research program divides broadly into four areas: Aggregate network calculus for guaranteed flows: To gain a thorough understanding of the fine time-scale(e.g., packet-level) behavior of a network system in providing QoS performance guarantees, we will develop an aggregate network calculus to study the impact of aggregate QoS control mechanisms on the performance and complexity of data plane operations. This theory is developed for guaranteed flows - flows which require the network to commit, either at a per-flow or an aggregate level, a certain amount of resources (e.g., bandwidth and buffer) throughout their life time, regardless of the network congestion status. The aggregate network calculus will provide a mathematical framework to quantify the impact of aggregate QoS controls on the fundamental trade-offs in QoS provisioning. It will also yield insights into the design of scalable data plane QoS control mechanisms. End-to-end QoS controls for responsive flows: The researchers will develop fluid models to study the impact of ag-gregate QoS control mechanisms on the end-to-end performance of responsive flows. A responsive flow responds to signs of network congestion, such as loss, by adapting its transmission rate. These models will enable us to develop a better understanding of the behavior of responsive flows such asTCP coupled with different aggregate QoS mechanisms and to design end-to-end QoS services for responsive flows. QoS control laws and control plane aggregation rules. The researchers will develop QoS control laws for capturing the slow time-scale, system-wide behavior of a network and aggregation rules that address the perfor-mance and complexity of control plane operations under aggregate QoS controls. These QoS control laws and aggregation rules will lead us to the design of distributed and centralized algorithms for scalable control plane operations. Scalable QoS mechanisms and service architectures As an integral part in developing these theories, the researchers will also design effective and scalable QoS mechanisms, and tools and techniques for quantifying and evaluating the trade-offs of various QoS solutions. Based on the results from these efforts, the researchers will study how various QoS solutions can be combined to construct meaningful end-to-end services. The research will blend formal modeling/analysis, experimentation/implementation, and evaluation. Theunderstanding and insights gained as a result of our research will lead to the establishment of the theory,design principles, and guidelines for building scalable QoS controls for the future Internet. This, in turn,will allow reasoned and informed choices to be made as the next generation Internet takes shape.