University of British Columbia

Cpsc 527
Advanced Computer Communications
Lecture 7b

DiffServ Overview
Instructor: Dr. Son T. Vuong
Email: vuong@cs.ubc.ca
The World Connected
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Outline

Overview of QoS and DiffServ

Our research on DiffServ
A Class of Protocols
Dynamic (Fair) Distribution DiffServ

Conclusions

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What is the Service on Internet

A "Service" defines some significant

characteristics of packet transmission in one
direction across a set of one or more paths
within a network.
These characteristics may be specified in
quantitative or statistical terms of:

throughput, delay, jitter, loss.

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Current Problems with the Internet

Best-effort service has strained its current

infrastructure capabilities.
A challenge is to design routers that can provide
service differentiation for various types of traffic.
Two solutions proposed in IETF:
Integrated service (IntServ): individual flows with
specific QoS requirements, e.g. RSVP flows
Differentiated services (DiffServ): aggregate of
flows and per-hop behavior.

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What is QoS and why we need it?

QoS has many different measures:

Delay, delay variance (jitter), rate
Fairness, flow isolation
Reliability, e.g. drop rate
QoS is needed in packet networks to support
multimedia applications: IP Telephony, mobile
web-access, Video teleconferencing, net-PC
applications, Grid services, etc.

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Application QoS requirements

Different applications=different QoS requirements.

Delay-sensitive real-time applications: Voice,

Interactive Video.
Delay-tolerant real-time applications: Streaming
Video.
Elastic applications that tolerate a wide range of
delay variations: FTP, Telnet and e-mail.

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How to Provide QoS in a Best-Effort

Internet?

More bandwidth does not solve the problem it only moves

it to the core of the network:
IP router technology has a limit to its computational
capabilities.
Also, fairness is not solved when bandwidth is
increased.
Solution: packet scheduling and resource reservation.

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Improving QOS in IP Networks

IETF groups are working on proposals to provide better QOS control in IP

networks, i.e., going beyond best effort to provide some assurance for QOS
Work in Progress includes RSVP, Differentiated Services, and Integrated
Services
Simple model
for sharing and
congestion
studies:

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Principles for QOS Guarantees

Consider a phone application at 1Mbps and an FTP application sharing a 1.5 Mbps
link.

bursts of FTP can congest the router and cause audio packets to be dropped.
want to give priority to audio over FTP

PRINCIPLE 1: Marking of packets is needed for router to distinguish between

different classes; and new router policy to treat packets accordingly

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Principles for QOS Guarantees (more)

Applications misbehave (audio sends packets at a rate higher than 1Mbps assumed
above);
PRINCIPLE 2: provide protection (isolation) for one class from other classes
Require Policing Mechanisms to ensure sources adhere to bandwidth requirements;
Marking and Policing need to be done at the edges:

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Principles for QOS Guarantees (more)

Alternative to Marking and Policing: allocate a set portion of bandwidth to

each application flow; can lead to inefficient use of bandwidth if one of the
flows does not use its allocation
PRINCIPLE 3: While providing isolation, it is desirable to use
resources as efficiently as possible

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Principles for QOS Guarantees (more)

Cannot support traffic beyond link capacity

PRINCIPLE 4: Need a Call Admission Process; application flow declares its
needs, network may block call if it cannot satisfy the needs

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Summary

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Scheduling And Policing

Mechanisms

Scheduling: choosing the next packet for transmission on a link can

be done following a number of policies;
FIFO: in order of arrival to the queue; packets that arrive to a full
buffer are either discarded, or a discard policy is used to determine
which packet to discard among the arrival and those already queued

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Scheduling Policies

Priority Queuing: classes have different priorities; class may

depend on explicit marking or other header info, eg IP source
or destination, TCP Port numbers, etc.
Transmit a packet from the highest priority class with a nonempty queue
Preemptive and non-preemptive versions

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Scheduling Policies (more)

Round Robin: scan class queues serving one from each class that has a
non-empty queue

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Scheduling Policies (more)

Weighted Fair Queuing: is a generalized

Round Robin in which an attempt is made to
provide a class with a differentiated amount of
service over a given period of time

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Policing Mechanisms

Three criteria:
(Long term) Average Rate (100 packets per sec or 6000
packets per min??), crucial aspect is the interval length
Peak Rate: e.g., 6000 p p minute Avg and 1500 p p sec Peak
(Max.) Burst Size: Max. number of packets sent consecutively,
ie over a short period of time

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Policing Mechanisms
Token Bucket: limit input to specified Burst Size and
Average Rate.

bucket can hold b tokens

tokens generated at rate r token/sec unless bucket
full
over interval of length t: number of packets admitted
less than or equal to (r t + b).

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Policing Mechanisms (more)

token bucket, WFQ combine to provide

guaranteed upper bound on delay, i.e., QoS
guarantee!

arriving
traffic

token rate, r
bucket size, b

WFQ

per-flow
rate, R

D = b/R
max

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What Is Scheduling and Why Do We

Need It?

In real networks, a large number of flows may require

different guarantees from the network.
Scheduling determines the next eligible packet, among
all the arriving packets, to be sent out in order to satisfy
the required guarantees.
Attributes of a good scheduler:
Rate and delay guarantees.
Fairness.
Utilization.
Simplicity.

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Scheduling (revisited)

Scheduling: per-flow or aggregated flows.

Per-flow (IntServ):
Provides exact delay and fairness guarantees.
Requires maintaining state information for all
active sessions on a link.
Aggregation (DiffServ):
Delay and fairness are not as easy to guarantee.
No (or minimal amount of) states need to be
maintained.

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Types of Schedulers

Rate-controlled: Delay / jitter Earliest Due

Date (D-EDD and J-EDD).
Non-rate-controlled: Generalized
Processor Sharing (GPS) and Weighted
Fair Queueing (WFQ).

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How GPS Works

Every session has its own queue and share.

Weighted Round Robin (WRR) service order with an
infinitesimal amount serviced from each session.
Empty queues are skipped when their turn arrives.

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End-to-End Network Delay

Host
Application

Access
Network

Core Network

Delay=Host Delay+Access Delay+Network Delay

Even if the network provided the required QoS
without the host applications or access networks
providing their guarantees then the end-to-end
guarantees will not be met.

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WFQ vs. GPS

Departures
Arrivals
1
2

GPS
scheduler

.
.
.

WFQ
scheduler

...

.
.
.
N-1
N

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Scheduling Policies (more)

Weighted Fair Queuing: is a generalized

Round Robin in which an attempt is made to
provide a class with a differentiated amount of
service over a given period of time

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Proactive Packet Discard

Congestion management by proactive

packet discard
Before buffer full
Used on single FIFO queue or multiple
queues for elastic traffic
E.g. Random Early Detection (RED)

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Random Early Detection (RED)

Motivation

Surges fill buffers and cause discards

On TCP this is a signal to enter slow start phase,
reducing load
Lost packets need to be resent
Adds to load and delay
Global synchronization
Traffic burst fills queues so packets lost
Many TCP connections enter slow start
Traffic drops so network under utilized
Connections leave slow start at same time
causing burst
Bigger buffers do not help
Try to anticipate onset of congestion and tell one
connection to slow down

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RED Design Goals

Congestion avoidance
Global synchronization avoidance

Avoidance of bias to bursty traffic

Current systems inform connections to

back off implicitly by dropping packets
Discard arriving packets will do this

Bound on average queue length

Hence control on average delay

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RED Algorithm Overview

Calculate average queue size avg
if avg < THmin
queue packet
else if THmin avg Thmax
calculate probability Pa
with probability Pa
discard packet
else with probability 1-Pa
queue packet
else if avg THmax
discard packet

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RED Buffer

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RED Algorithm Detail

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Architecture of DiffServ

DiffServ Domain
A Set of per-hop (forwarding) behaviors (PHB).
Packet classification functions.
Traffic conditioning functions including:

metering
marking
shaping
policing

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DS Nodes

DS boundary Nodes
Classify the ingress packets.
Perform traffic conditioning according to a
traffic conditioning agreement (TCA)

DS Interior Nodes

Perform limited traffic conditioning functions

such as DS codepoint re-marking.

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DS Definition

000000 : Best - effort behavior

Pool
Codepoint space Policy
1
xxxxx0
Standards Action
2
xxxx11
EXP/LU
3
xxxx01
EXP/LU (*)
(*) May be used for future Standards Action allocations as
necessary

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Example of DiffServ Domains

H
B
H

R
R

H
H

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Per-Hop Behaviors (PHB)

PHB is a description of forwarding behavior of a

DS node for a particular DS behavior aggregate.
Via PHBs, a node allocates its resources (buffer ,
bandwidth , delay, loss) to behavior aggregates.
PHBs are implemented via buffer management
and packet scheduling mechanisms.
A PHB is selected at a node by a mapping of the
DS codepoint in a received packet.

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Traffic Conditioning Specification

The TCS specifies detailed service parameters for

each service level :
Service performance parameters such as
expected throughput, drop probability, latency.
Traffic profiles which must be adhered to for the
requested service to be provided, such as
token bucket parameters.
Disposition of traffic submitted in excess of the
specified profile.
Marking services provided.
Shaping services provided.

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Packet Classifier and Traffic Conditioner

Classifier : select packets in a traffic stream based on

packet header.
Meter: measures the temporal properties of the
stream of packets selected by a traffic profile.
Marker: sets the DS field of a packet to a particular
codepoint, add marked packet to a DS behavior
aggregate.
Shaper: shapes the traffic stream to bring it into
compliance with a traffic profile.
Dropper: discards some or all packets in a traffic
stream to bring it into compliance with a traffic profile.

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Service Level Specification (SLS)

In addition to TCS, the SLS specifies more general

service :
Availability/Reliability
Encryption services.
Routing constraints.
Authentication mechanisms.
Mechanisms for service monitoring and auditing.
Responsibilities such as location of the equipment
and functionality, action if the contract is broken,
support
capabilities.
Pricing and billing mechanisms.

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Profile in Router

Profile ----> behavior of the router

There may be many profiles in the router at any
time.
Profile contains :
Name
Attribute

(in/out)
Policy Scope
Other information (Address , port, permission,
month mask, time of day, direction )
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Example of Profile

Name
Entry2
PolicyScope
DataTraffic
TimeOfDayRange
090000 to 170000
IncomingTOS
111
SourceAddressRange
139.24.2.12
to 139.24.2.255
Direction
Outgoing
MaxeRate
5000
OutgoingTOS
101

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Examples of Services

Better than Best-Effort (BBE) Service :

This is a qualitative service which promises

to carry specific web server traffic at a higher
priority than best-effort traffic.

Premium Service :

Customer purchases a peak rate

Packets below that rate carried with no delay
Packets above that rate dropped

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Our research on DiffServ

We focus on differentiated service since

this aggregate service scales better than the
per-flow integrated service.
We focus on developing a class of protocols
including the Meter, Marker, Shaper at the
Boundary nodes and the per-hop behavior
of all interior nodes in a DS Domain.
For performance evaluation, the network
simulator NS2 was used.

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DiffServ and BestEffort Queues

DiffServ queue

Best-effort queue

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The simulation of DiffServ and BestEffort for TCP/IP traffic

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The Dynamic Distribution DiffServ

The scheme unites DiffServ flows with Dynamic

Distribution to the aggregate before sending them
to the network.
Dynamic Distribution prevents any aggregate from
taking all the bandwidth in a period of time, thus
allows every aggregate a chance of passing through
the router at all times.
Dynamic Distribution also guarantees Multimedia
applications an upper bound on packet delay inside
the DiffServ domain without the per-flow requirement.

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Multiple Queues in DiffServ Router

Backlogged packets

DiffServ queues

Figure 1. Multiple-Queues in a Router of the DiffServ Domain

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The Scheme of Dynamic Distribution

Differentiated Service

This scheme simplifies processing at routers in

DiffServ domain (cf. the IntServ scheme) while
maintaining QoS guarantee for every flow.
At Boundary Nodes, packets are classified by
their flows, which may number in thousands at
one node or tens of thousand in the whole
domain
At Inside Nodes, packets classified by their
aggregates, numbered in hundreds at a node.

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The Scheme at Boundary Node

Classifier: selects packets in a traffic stream

based on DiffServ byte in header.
Meter: The leaky-bucket meter scheme for every
flow with its subscribed bandwidth.
Dropper: drops all out-profile packets.
Shaper: Fair-Queue scheme for every DiffServ
flow depending on the subscribing bandwidth.
Marker: an aggregate marking scheme
PHB: exact Fair-Queue forwarding scheme.

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The Scheme for Interior Nodes

Classifier: selects packets in a traffic

stream based on DiffServ byte and places
them in appropriate queues.
Shaper: time divided into equal slots, each
further divided mini-slots. Each aggregate
receives a number of mini slots based on
calculation at the beginning of the slot.
PHB: Frame-based forwarding scheme with
Dynamic Distribution of resources.

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Summary

The proposed Dynamic Distribution DiffServ scheme is

flexible, simple and efficient
Guarantees delay bound without the per-flow
complexity, suitable for multimedia traffic.
Future work:
Various types of multimedia application traffic such
as video teleconferencing
Various performance measures, including delay,
throughput and jitter
Multicasting and security DS services

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