RFC 3387 (rfc3387) - Page 2 of 19

Considerations from the Service Management Research Group (SMRG) on Quality of Service (QoS) in the IP Network

RFC 3387        IP Service Management in the QoS Network  September 2002


   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 document 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 it represents 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.  QoS management is a
   subset of the more general service management.  In looking to solve
   the QoS management problem it can be useful to understand some of the
   issues and limitations of the service management problem.  QoS can
   not be treated as a standalone entity and will have its management
   requirements driven by the general higher level service requirements.
   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 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



Eder, et. al.                Informational