As more and more devices are being network enabled, Network Operators and Communication Service providers are being challenged to provide ever more reliable and consistent transport systems to allow users to take full advantage of the Internet of Things (IoT).
Quality of Service (QoS) is the grouping of these growing expectations that spans from Availability (uptime); scalability (peaks and troughs of demand); resilience and reliability (consistent performance); and Performance (throughput).
The diversity of network traffic provides further challenges for NO’s and CSPs. Real time Video streams need to be handled so end user’s experience continuous video with synchronised audio, whilst real-time Audio needs to delivered to avoid clipping (words being clipped), chopping (missing pieces of audio) or Jitter (packet delay). The growing demands of Device data such as Geo-positioning needs small data with guaranteed delivery, and similarly for applications that use geo-positioning to provide further services (navigation; real time bus/train/tram times; car unlocking; to mention a few)
Beyond the basic needs of core infrastructure scalability, the peaks and troughs of demand can be predicted. For example many people commute between 7-10am and 4-7pm; business meetings tend to start on the hour or half hour and between 9-12 noon and 2-5pm. Music and Video streaming peaks occur in the evening and weekends. These basic demand profiles are the baseline for the NO and CSP QoS architecture.
Todays’ infrastructure network devices provide an ever increasing set of functions to shape, manage and route ip traffic (RSVP, DiffServ, MPLS, SBM), and the challenge for NO’s and CSP’s is to formulate an integrated architecture to meet the needs of the different types of network traffic that can effectively utilise those inbuilt traffic management capabilities.
QoS architectures continue to evolve over the years and the key elements of those that have proved successful so far include: Implementing complexity at network edges; A simple network core; A horizontally scalable management layer; separating signalling from transmission of data; segregating types of network traffic and specifically addressing network traffic needs separately. Within the Powwownow business, our customers demand five nine’s uptime and availability and levels of resilience that enable them to hold business meetings whenever and wherever, across multiple devices (Telephone; smartphone; tablet; PC) and using multiple data demands (Video/Audio; Audio; Chat; Screenshare, Fileshare, and all of them together). In addition to the above key QoS architecture elements we have implemented mechanisms that enable the dynamic provisioning of infrastructure to scale our capacity with the second by second demands of customer traffic.In summary, the challenges are increasing with the introduction of more data hungry devices and variety of applications that are driving more innovative approaches to QoS architectures.
By Chris Martin, Chief Technology Office at Powwownow
