RFC 3387 (rfc3387) - Page 3 of 19
Considerations from the Service Management Research Group (SMRG) on Quality of Service (QoS) in the IP Network
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 3387 IP Service Management in the QoS Network September 2002
today. The IP community must be very concerned that the equality
that characterized the best effort Internet may be sacrificed in
favor of a service that has a completely different business model.
If the core network started to provide services that generated more
revenue, it could easily come at the expense of the less revenue
generating best effort service.
3. IP Management Standardization
Management standardization efforts in the IP community have
traditionally been concerned with what is commonly referred to as
"element management" or "device management". Recently, new efforts
in IP management have added the ability to address service issues and
to look at the network in more abstract terms. These efforts which
included a logical representation of services as well as the
representation of resources in the network, combined with the notion
of a user of a service, has made possible the much talked about
concept of 'policy'. Notable among these efforts are the Policy work
in the IETF and the DMTF work on CIM and DEN. Crucial elements of
the service management framework are coming into perspective, but
point to a trend in IP that is a quite radical departure from the
control mechanisms of the past. As the service model evolves from
being what was sufficient to support best effort to being able to
support variable levels of service, a trend towards a centralized
management architecture has become quite apparent.
This is becoming increasingly apparent for two reasons. QoS
mechanisms need network wide information [4], and for them to
succeed, they must not require a tremendous amount of support from
the core network. It is becoming increasingly accepted that only at
the edge of the network will there be sufficient resources to provide
the mechanisms necessary to admit and control various QoS flows.
A question often asked these days is if "the architectural benefits
of providing services in the middle of the network outweigh the
architectural costs"[5]. This same question should be asked of
service management. As new network elements are needed to support
service management, even if they are not contributing directly to the
forwarding of packets, the cost both in the increased complexity and
the possibility of destabilizing the networks needs to be considered.
An analyses of this issue will be made by the SMRG when we start to
look more in detail at some of the issues raised in this survey
document.
Eder, et. al. Informational