RFC 3387 (rfc3387) - Page 3 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


   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