QoS-aware multi-plane routing for future IP-based access networks

With the increasing interest in continuous media streaming applications such as audio and video, quality of service (QoS) is becoming more and more important. Providing QoS guarantees in packet access networks gives rise to several challenging issues. There are several aspects of QoS to be considered. For example, to support video communication high throughput is required and therefore, high bandwidth guarantees will have to be made. Audio communication, in contrast, does not usually require high bandwidth. End-to-end delay and delay variations are other factors that must be taking into account for time-critical traffic such as VoIP. In this paper, we propose a new mechanism using Multi-Plane Routing (MPR) principle based on multi-topology OSPF (MT-OSPF). Our approach, Q-MPR, leverages multiple alternate routing planes through a network for enabling maximum path diversity, and then maps traffic flows onto specific planes, using a multi-constrained cost function, respecting QoS requirements and improving quality of experience seen from end users. A maximum gain of 55%, 91% and 82% in throughput, packet loss and one-way packet delay can be achieved using our approach.