Policy based On-Demand Bandwidth Provisioning and Assurance in DiffServ Enabled MPLS Networks

Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) based Differentiated Services (DiffServ) architecture provides an attractive solution for IP traffic engineering to meet service quality and reliability. MPLS enables traffic engineering with protection/restoration while diffServ enables class-based service differentiation. However, MPLS and DiffServ capabilities alone are not adequate to meet the needs of on-demand network resource requirements of multi-media applications. For example, DiffServ cannot prevent flows within a class affecting each other's Quality of Service (QoS). To overcome the limitations of MPLS based DiffServ networks, we propose a policy-driven bandwidth provisioning and assurance system that operates responding to user requests and network conditions. It admits traffic into the network only if it can allocate the requested bandwidth, degrading, if necessary, lower priority traffic to best effort service; assignment of flows to LSP is based on traffic engineering policies; it restores failed flows by dynamic re-assignment of flows to LSPs, creating new LSPs if necessary; it supports adjustments in the degree of multiplexing (i.e., overbooking) for flows in individual DiffServ classes.