Flow-level QoS assurance via IPv6 in-band signalling

Emerging applications such as augmented reality/ virtual reality are requiring quality of service (QoS) guaranteed network services. The existing QoS frameworks and mechanisms in the current Internet, such as IntServ, DiffServ, and MPLS have their own irreparable issues. The paper proposes a new method which uses in-band signaling with closed-loop control to address those issues and provide QoS at different level of granularities with scalability. The paper presents the new message types that leverage the existing IPv6 extension headers for in-band signaling and associated data forwarding. TCP as one of two most popular Internet transport protocols is used to illustrate how the in-band signaling is achieved in setting up QoS path and forwarding data. The paper discusses the performance improvements over the existing QoS mechanisms and the positive changes brought to the service providers and content providers.