1 NOKIA

QoS and Mobility

Rajeev Koodli, Cedric Westphal
and Meghana Sahasrabude
Nokia Research Center
Mountain View, CA

2 NOKIA
Overview
Background

Problem scope

Current work

Discussion
3 NOKIA
The Mobile World
In the future, a major part
of personal communication
- be it voice, data, images or video -
will be wireless.
The personal mobile device
will be the main medium and platform!

4 NOKIA
Applications, platforms, connectivity
Music
Bluetooth
Java
Symbian
MP-3
Games
E-money
Streaming
Images
Sync-ML
There will be an explosion of different
optimized, personalized products
Location
Messaging
5 NOKIA
Amount and Types of Mobile Content Will
Explode in the Future
Types of content:
User created (images, videoclips, music etc.)
Personal (music, movies, movieclips, games,
applications, etc.)
Group (family, friends, daughter's soccer team etc.)
Community (greyhound owners' image album etc.)
Subscribed (Manchester United Multimedia news
service etc.)
Network provided (location-based weather info etc.)
Images
MMSs Audio/music Applications Videoclips
6 NOKIA
Applications and Platform Convergence
Entertainment
Music, Games, Fun!
Voice/SMS
Calling, Messaging
Imaging
Multimedia Messaging
Media
Web Content Consumption
Communicator
Business Services
7 NOKIA 2002
QoS and Mobility
The challenge for us: how to
provide appropriate Quality of
Service to applications on
mobile devices.

8 NOKIA
QoS and Mobility
Pessimists view
Lots of literature, little understanding
Combine the two, there is even more confusion!

On the other hand,
the relative merits are better understood
QoS is mostly Connection Admission Control (CAC) and
Scheduling problem (transport issues)
Mobility is a routing problem
So, transport and routing interplay opens up new issues

We will consider the two separately first
9 NOKIA
QoS
How do you provide desirable treatment for certain flows (as
opposed to others) ?

Connection Admission Control decides whether resources can
be provided without affecting existing flows
generally a hard problem: flow models, flow aggregation,
end-to-end resource admission issues
SLAs are typically used for exchanging traffic across
operator domains; intra-domain CAC is the domains
problem!

Scheduling ensures that packet treatment (Per-Hop Behavior
or PHB) is according to the admitted parameters
multiple well-known scheduling algorithms, WFQ, WF
2
Q,
DRR, CSFQ
most vendors support multi-class queues


10 NOKIA
QoS...
What does QoS entail then ?
Classify an incoming packet
Meter (if needed)
(Re)Mark the packet for appropriate treatment
schedule packet for transmission
means state at a router

Intserv requires all Intserv-compliant nodes on the end-to-end
path to have (soft) state and update it via periodic refresh
messages
signaling (e.g., RSVP) necessary

Diffserv moves all state to the edge while leaving core routers
to provide PHBs based on Behavior Aggregates
signaling may be necessary at the edge
11 NOKIA
Path of a packet
Marker
+
Packet
Classifier
Policy Input
Incoming
packet
To output
queue
Police/
Shape
Meter
12 NOKIA
Mobility
How to allow transport protocols to use a fixed IP address
while the device changes subnets ?

IP address never changes despite movement across subnets
burden on the network to route packets to topologically
inconsistent addresses (host based routing)
ad hoc network routing is based on host routing

IP address changes when subnet prefix changes
burden on the Mobile Node (MN) to ensure it receives
packets; normal prefix-based routing
mobile ip requires a MN to update its home network router
(actually a Home Agent) to receive packets


13 NOKIA
Mobility..
On some networks, link layer handles mobility to make subnet
mobility transparent
GPRS, UMTS











Will consider mobility with IP address change in this talk
GGSN
SGSN
SGSN
PDP context activate
PDP Context Update
IP network
14 NOKIA
Mobile IP
R1
R2
MN
CN
Internet
Visited domain
HA
MN: Mobile Node
HA: Home Agent
CN: Correspondent Node
15 NOKIA
Mobility...
So, what does mobility involve ?

The MN should detect that it has moved to a new subnet
typically done through router advertisements
fast handovers allow a MN to be notified a priori

MN must configure a new topologically correct IP address

Inform its home network agent about its new co-ordinates
The MN may directly inform its correspondent nodes

There is connectivity latency and route update latency
16 NOKIA
QoS and Mobility problem
Since QoS implies state at a router and mobility means routing
path change, how is the QoS state re-established due to
mobility ?

Possible approaches to solving the problem
End-to-end state re-establishment (for Intserv)
Only access link state re-establishment (for Diffserv)
hybrid of the above two
17 NOKIA
End-to-end state re-establishment
Needs signaling
RSVP
the most well-known end-to-end QoS signaling protocol
mobility-unaware; does not necessarily know that handover
has happened
latency before the messages are even sent
mobility-blind; i.e, if an IP address changes, the flow is new
end-to-end signaling
admission control
unable to make use of localized mobility management
extensions possible; e.g., use Home Address or a session-
id in addition to the standard flow classifier

nice analysis in draft-thomas-seamoby-rsvp-analysis

18 NOKIA
End-to-end..
R1
R2
MN
CN
Signaling, data
19 NOKIA
End-to-end...
Mobile IP extension
when a MN configures a new IP address (due to handover),
it sends a Binding Update message to its Correspondent
Node
provides a natural point to initiate QoS signaling
piggyback on Binding Update
fast initiation of signaling
an existing flow needs to be identified by a mobility invariant attribute such
as a session-id, flow-label
provides ability to make use of localized mobility
signaling confined to nodes affected by mobility
state re-use

provides performance benefits compared to RSVP

A Framework for QoS Support in Mobile IPv6, draft-chaskar-mobileip-qos-
01.txt, IEEE Wireless BB Summit, 2001
QoS-Conditionalized Binding Update in Mobile IPv6, draft-tkn-mobileip-
qosbinding-mipv6-00.txt, A. Festag et al.




20 NOKIA
End-to-end.
R1
R2
MN
CN
Signaling, data
LMM domain
signaling
21 NOKIA
Access Link state establishment
An Access Router ensures that the flow entering into the
network is conformant

The state at the AR may be by RSVP, ICMP or by link layer-
specific mechanisms

During handover,
state is re-established by requiring the MN to re-initiate
signaling
state is transferred from an AR to another
22 NOKIA
Access Link..
R1
R2
MN
CN
Access link signaling
Context Transfer
23 NOKIA
Context Transfer
Mobile Nodes establish network state at their access routers
AAA, QoS, Header Compression, IPSec

State needs to be re-established at the new access router

Transferring state during handovers
saves signaling overhead over the air interface
provides performance benefits for transport protocols
makes handovers seamless

Fast Handovers and Context Transfers in Mobile Networks, R. Koodli and
C. E. Perkins, ACM CCR, October 2001
A Context Transfer Protocol for Seamless Mobility, draft-koodli-seamoby-
ct-03.txt

24 NOKIA
QoS CT
QoS state established via access link signaling

QoS context = {QoS Profile Type, QoS Profile}

QPT = Diffserv, Intserv, Best-Effort

QoS Profile = attribute values corresponding to a QPT
packet classifier, meter, marker

Link-specific Profile Types could also be defined

Context Relocation of QoS Parameters in IP Networks, draft-
westphal-seamoby-qos-relocate-00.txt
25 NOKIA
Performance Improvement with QoS CT
Normalized Packet discarding
0
1
2
3
4
5
0 500 1000 1500
Load on the new Access Router
in Kbps
P
a
c
k
e
t

d
i
s
c
a
r
d

c
o
-
e
f
f
i
c
i
e
n
twithout Context
Transfer
with Context Transfer
26 NOKIA
CT and Signaling
CT works when state is restricted to an access router (or a
single node)

When state needs to be re-established along multiple nodes,
signaling is necessary

CT across access routers and signaling upstream may be
useful
saves air interface signaling overhead
when accomplished sufficiently in advance, all the relevant
nodes could have the state
end-to-end signaling not ideal for seamless handovers
27 NOKIA
Open problems
New router interface capability
dissemination
extrapolating this at the previous router
?

What should be the QoS given ?
E.g., should TCP be allowed to
continue with the rate before handover
?


QoS authorization during handovers; how
does the new router know it is allowed to
support QoS for the MN ?

QoS accounting state transfer



28 NOKIA

QUESTIONS??

http://people.nokia.net/~rajeev,~cedric