Efficient resource allocation in differentiated services networks

The classic best-effort Internet is evolving into a versatile network that can provide various multimedia real-time services in addition to the traditional data services, and can provision certain quality of service (QoS) guarantee to different Internet applications. The differentiated services (DiffServ) model has been proposed as a scalable traffic management mechanism to ensure Internet QoS without using per-flow resource reservation and per-flow signaling, but it sacrifices the ability to accurately configure the network devices and efficiently utilize the network resources. In this thesis, the DiffServ model is augmented with traffic engineering tools, per-flow call admission control (CAC), dynamic resource sharing schemes to improve resource utilization efficiency.; Specifically, an advanced two-tier resource management (ATTRM) model is proposed for efficient resource allocation over DiffServ networks, which manages network resources based on the “first plan, then take care” principle. By proper boundary service level agreement (SLA) arrangement and path-oriented internal resource mapping, the Internet service provider (ISP) can optimally plan the network resources to achieve the maximum long-term network revenue. To efficiently utilize the well-planned network, novel effective bandwidth techniques are developed for packet- and call-level QoS control in DiffServ networks. The statistical multiplexing gain on the time scale of the call holding time is also exploited by the proposed dynamic inter-SLA resource sharing scheme, where the spare capacity of underloaded SLAs is utilized by overloaded SLAs to improve the call-level throughput over the network. Performance of the proposed effective bandwidth technique and dynamic inter-SLA resource sharing scheme is demonstrated through numerical analysis and computer simulation results.; The Internet is merging with wireless cellular systems to achieve a ubiquitous IP network, and DiffServ is an appropriate scheme to provision QoS over IP-based wireless access networks. Application of the proposed resource allocation techniques to DiffServ wireless networks is also investigated. Especially, the effective bandwidth can be adaptively calculated to provision different levels of QoS depending on network conditions, which is particularly useful for efficient resource utilization in wireless networks where the resources available to a mobile user change with time.