Network optimisation method

• US 20030103510A1
• Filed: 10/10/2002
• Published: 06/05/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 04/13/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NetSocket, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Operax AB (NetSocket, Inc.)
• Inventors: Larsson, Anders, Norrgard, Joakim, Svanberg, Emil, Johansson, Joachim, Torger, Anders
• Granted Patent: US 7,190,698 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/395.2
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4633 Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0897 by horizontal or vertical scaling of resources, or by migrating entities, e.g. virtual resources or entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5003 Managing SLA; Interaction between SLA and QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5067 Customer-centric QoS measurements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/02 Topology update or discovery
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/302 Route determination based on requested QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/306 Route determination based on the nature of the carried application
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/308 Route determination based on user's profile, e.g. premium users
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/50 using label swapping, e.g. multi-protocol label switch [MPLS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/10 Flow control; Congestion control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/15 in relation to multipoint traffic arrangements for broadcast or multicast in data networks H04L12/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/22 Traffic shaping
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2408 for supporting different services, e.g. a differentiated services [DiffServ] type of service
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2425 for supporting services specification, e.g. SLA
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/70 Admission control; Resource allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/781 Centralised allocation of resources
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/785 among multiple network domains, e.g. multilateral agreements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/805 QOS or priority aware
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/825 Involving tunnels, e.g. MPLS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/829 : Topology based
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/83 : based on usage prediction

Abstract

Method in a packet based communication network including network domains to establish a virtual leased line (VLL) between a source (SRC) and a destination (DST) in different domains in order to achieve packet transfer between the source and the destination, wherein a bandwidth broker (BB) is associated to each network domain.

Claims

1. Method in a packet based communication network including network domains to establish a virtual leased line (VLL) between a source (SRC) and a destination (DST) in different domains in order to achieve packet transfer between the source and the destination, wherein a bandwidth broker (BB) is associated to each network domain, the method comprises the following steps:

i) generate a request from an entity for a Virtual Leased Line (VLL) having a predefined Quality of Service (QoS) from a source network (SRC) to a destination network (DST) and apply the request to a Bandwidth Broker of a domain A (BB_A) associated to the source network;

ii) BB_A establishes the different domains involved to reach the destination network (DST);

iii) BB_A directly or indirectly passes requests to all Bandwidth Brokers of the involved domains regarding a VLL of the predefined QoS from ingress to egress of each domain;

iv) each involved bandwidth broker performs admission control in its domain;

v) each involved bandwidth broker returns a result of the admission control to BB_A that passes it back to the requesting entity and if the request was admitted along all domains between SRC and DST a VLL of the predefined QoS is granted.

2. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that the method comprises the following step to be performed after step v):

vi) BB_A engages in Traffic Conditioners (TC) configuration in the ingress router for SRC in order to establish a VLL of the predefined QoS.

3. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that step iv) comprises the following sub-step:

passing a request to one or many involved intra-domain brokers (IDB) in hop areas in the involved domains, wherein each intra-domain broker performs admission control.

4. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that in step iv) in addition to the admission control a Label-Switched Path (LSP) setup is performed.

5. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that said domains comprise at least one Differentiated Services (DiffServ) domain and one Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) domain.

6. Method according to claim 5, characterized in that in a MPLS domain the BB is responsible for passing resource requests to the intra-domain brokers (IDB), wherein each intra-domain broker is responsible for admission control and LSP setup.

7. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that said predefined QoS is a rate R.

8. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that the bandwidth broker comprises a topology map and routing information to be able to perform path sensitive admission control of incoming requests, wherein the information is retrieved by peering as a link-state router.

9. Method according to claim 8, characterized in that the bandwidth broker comprises a data-structure which keeps resource usage information over time for each link in the topology which enables ability to plan ahead of time.

10. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that a bandwidth broker in a specific domain performs admission control for all links in the path that belong to that domain.

11. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that a bandwidth broker comprises a storage, where it stores records of all its granted requests and also user-related data such as policies or accounting information.