(T1) Trends and QoS Issues in VoIP Service

Koichi Asatani (Kogakuin University, Japan)

Abstract: Internet Telephony market is glowing very rapidly both in the international and domestic telecommunication markets.  It is expected that the traffic of the global Internet telephony will exceed that of international legacy telephone traffic in around 2005.  Currently, QoS of Internet telephony is not guaranteed nor specified.  The interconnection of Internet telephony and legacy telephony is one of the most important demands. The QoS guarantee assumes that QoS is specified, measured and controlled. Also for the interconnection, numbering/addressing plan for the Internet telephony is very vital. This tutorial introduces trends in services and markets, state of the art on network architecture, and QoS measurement and management technologies related to Internet telephony. It also touches the current status of the international standards in ITU-T, TIPHON project of ETSI and IETF.

Recommended Audience: IT Engineers, IT Managers and Graduate Students.

Level: Introductory

(T2) DiffServ-aware-MPLS Networking: a Promising Traffic Engineering for Next Generation Internet (NGI)

Young-Tak Kim (Yeungnam University, Korea)

Abstract: In order to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) of critical Internet services, while optimizing network resource utilization which facilitates efficient and reliable network operations, the efficient traffic engineering is essential in next generation Internet. DiffServ-aware-MPLS has been studied in IETF as a promising solution for the integrated traffic engineering; the differentiated service (DiffServ) traffic engineering provides microscopic flow control for each service type, while the MPLS traffic engineering provides macroscopic traffic control among the aggregated traffic flows. This tutorial provides the basic concepts and operations of the DiffServ-aware-MPLS traffic engineering as the promising candidate of the efficient traffic engineering technology for the next generation Internet. It also provides some practical examples of the traffic engineering with DiffServ-aware-MPLS for VPN (Virtual Private Network) and VoIP upon a small test-bed IP network with Cisco Routers.

Recommended Audience: Network Managers for Enterprise Network and ISP Networks, Engineers with responsibility for planning, operating, and managing networks to provide QoS-guaranteed Internet services.

Level: Intermediate

(T3) Quality of Service Control in the Internet

Raouf Boutaba (University of Waterloo, Canada)

Abstract: New multimedia networking applications such as entertainment video, IP telephony, Internet radio, teleconferencing, interactive games, virtual worlds, and others have known an explosive growth in the recent years. These applications are highly sensitive to end-to-end delay and delay variation. These particular service requirements suggest that a network architecture that has been designed primarily for packet loss sensitive data communication is not adequate for supporting multimedia applications. A number of efforts to extend the Internet architecture to provide explicit support for the service requirements of multimedia applications are currently deployed. These efforts involve the development of new standards for framing and controlling the transmission of multimedia data, dedicated transport protocols, new signaling protocols, and new network layer service abstractions. This tutorial examines the key principles of the next-generation Internet architecture being developed to support service classes that provide quality-of-service (QoS) performance guarantees to multimedia applications. This tutorial will also discuss policy-based networking as the control component of next generation QoS-sensitive Internet.

Recommended Audience: Engineers, technicians, network managers, consultants, graduate students, marketing personnel, and executives.

Level: Introductory

(T4) Wireless Location-based Services: Technologies, Applications and Management

Graham Chen (EPAC Technologies, Australia)

Abstract: The global wireless data technology sector is experiencing a strong growth both in business enterprise and consumer market. The underlying driving force of this growth is the steadily increased number of global mobile subscribers. More significantly, the data service capability in the wireless networks is enabling more wireless data applications and these applications complement or even replace some functions offered by Internet and traditional IT systems. The global wireless network today behaves not only as a voice service delivery network, but also a general information services delivery network. The widely anticipated 3G broadband capabilities and mobile positioning capabilities will further fuel the growth of the wireless data services and generate increased revenue for service providers. Supported by the mobile networks and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), Location-Based Services (LBS) sector is poised as a strong growth sector in value-added wireless data services market. The global LBS market is going through very rapid formation, restructuring and consolidation processes. The usefulness of location-based capabilities as a potentially significant value add to current and future 3G services is universally recognized. However, the predictions of the industry on how big the LBS market is and how it will develop and evolve differ by a large margin. The LBS players are still yet to find a viable revenue model, based on the prospect of real revenue generation capability of LBS to the mobile service providers.

Recommended Audience: IT professionals to help understanding the state of play in technology, applications, services and business issues and challenges in this dynamic market segment.

Level: Introductory to intermediate

(T5) Service Level Agreements (SLA)

Christian Rad (AT&T Laboratories, U.S.A.)

Abstract: Performance guarantees have emerged as a means for IT managers to ensure their critical business data is delivered in a reliable and consistent manner. These performance guarantees, coupled with traditional support such as Mean Time to Repair and Mean Time Between Failures are now referred to, in the industry, as Service Level Agreements (SLA). This tutorial will review the basic elements of the broader topics of Service Level Agreements, Service Level Management and Service Level Assurance. Topics will include SLA parameters and associated definitions, description of the current direction in network architecture and its impact on SLA monitoring, challenges in data collection, survey of the industry with respect to SLA monitoring schemes, and a review of commercial tools.

Recommended Audience: Suppliers, consumers of IT, business managers, students, and engineers who implement SLA programs. This tutorial requires a basic knowledge of information technology, processes, and transport network topology and the associated network.

Level: Introductory

(T6) IMT-2000 Network, Operation Support System and Service

Kouzou Sakae (NTT DoCoMo, Japan)

Abstract: NTT DoCoMo began its IMT-2000 service in October 2001. We have named its service brand ¡°FOMA¡± which stands for Freedom of Mobile multimedia Access. The naming reflects our goal to get as close as possible to the ideal mobile communication system, in which we can access anyone or any type of information regardless of when and where we are. We are trying to create an environment that allows one to communicate easily ¡°whenever, wherever, and with whomever¡± on a global scale. This tutorial reviews the concept of IMT-2000 first. It then reviews the IMT-2000 network and the integrated operation support system (OSS), which NTT DoCoMo has constructed. This tutorial discusses main points to construct them, which are compared to the legacy ones in DoCoMo. The goals of IMT-2000 from the service perspective is to be able to provide mobile multimedia service, which includes data and image transmission, at a maximum data rate of up to 2Mbps. The goal is to also enable this from multiple operational environments, both indoors and outdoors. The tutorial presents prospective IMT-2000 services, and introduces an advanced infrastructure for supplying multi-media services in DoCoMo.

Recommended Audience: Engineers with responsibility for planning, operating, and managing networks.

Level: Introductory