Service providers have traditionally been unable to monetize web-based services traveling over their networks. These services have however been instrumental in driving broadband take up and increasing bandwidth demand. Services such as gaming and real-time video streaming can be significantly impacted by the ‘best effort’ delivery provided by the internet - particularly in highly contended aggregation networks. Best effort services seem set to degrade further with virtually all video content providers now providing access to their content via the internet. With this increased load, and little commercial incentive for operators to increase the bandwidth available for their delivery, many web-based services face the prospect of diminishing quality.

Quality issues associated with web-based Services

Many applications utilizing the internet such as web browsing, e-mail, P2P file sharing, and video download (for storage)are not real-time and as such limited throughput or queuing within the network result in slower but eventual delivery. However, many services are real-time and delay sensitive with QoS issues within the network resulting in direct visible or audio impact to the end subscriber. Services within this category include:

• VoIP - Very often these services are combined with Instant messaging and presence but it is the voice that relies on real time delivery. Whilst buffering and error correction can resolve minor delivery issues the more significant packet loss and queuing which occurs on the internet tends to exceed the limits of these mechanisms resulting in audible effects of loss of speech all together.
• Video Streaming - Providers of video content can choose to provide video download or video streaming services. Users tend to favor real-time streaming as they can watch the content they selected rather than have to wait a significant period. In addition content owners prefer to stream as it is easier to secure their content from unauthorized copying. In the internet environment however, it is optimistic to expect existing networks with contention ratios of up to 1:100 to expect one user to be given 1Mbits plus for the period of 30 minutes to 2 hours.
• Gaming - Online gaming is real-time and the user experience is highly sensitive to delay

Fair use and its impact

Some Service providers have sought to limit the impact of very high usage subscribers by providing monthly download limits and/or installing Deep Packet Inspection devices to identify high usage applications such as Peer to Peer file sharing and adjust the prioritization of those applications. This approach has allowed operators to provide adequate service to all subscribers whilst also limiting the peering settlement burden of P2P traffic.

With the advent of mass market video both in a catch up TV format and movie streaming / downloads, it is inevitable that many more users will exceed their monthly usage limits or worse, the real time video that they are trying to watch will be throttled back making it unwatchable. Whilst operators can bring to market higher monthly limits for users with a higher price, this is unlikely to be widely accepted without visible quality improvements on the applications that users are trying to watch and listen to.

Operax Resource Controller products provide per session QoS guarantees for web-based services in IP networks. This is achieved in conjunction with Deep Packet Inspection devices which are widely deployed in best effort services currently. Traditionally DPI has been used to identify particular applications (typically P2P) so that traffic classes can be labeled and their throughput priority reset. With dynamic Resource and Admission Control it is now possible to enhance this facility from a policing function to a revenue generation opportunity.

For example, if the subscriber has signed up to receive guaranteed QoS delivery for all legally available video content. DPI is used to identify video traffic in that category. Operax dynamic Resource and Admission Control can then be queried to ensure that resource exists to carry the video session in with guaranteed QoS and no contention. If the session can be guaranteed then a policy is passed to the DPI to pass the session in an revised traffic class.
Dynamic Resource and Admission Control can also be used to intelligently share bandwidth between services. For example on the access line, Quality enhanced web-based services could use bandwidth normally reserved for a second SDTV service when that service is not in use..

The solution has the following advantages for web-based services and multi-service environments:

Topology Aware
Operax Resource Controllers are topology aware, which enables path-sensitive admission control. The relevant sub-set of network resource contention points for each individual session are identified and considered in the admission control process. This includes the number and type of sessions delivered to the subscriber to ensure available bandwidth in the access, aggregation and core networks is not exceeded.

Multi service Solution
Whilst it is possible to implement application specific admission control solutions (e.g. “call-counting”), these are only aware of the application that they manage. This leads the network to be logically partitioned into separate networks for VoIP, IPTV and VoD, etc. Evidence from operators suggests that there is a 15 % operational saving in managing the transport network when these partitions are removed. Operax views the network as one common all-IP resource which is available to all applications. It then manages how the services are allocated bandwidth within that pool using network policy rules and the actual enforcement of subscriber and service policies.