46PaQ: IPv4 & IPv6 Performance and QoS
A star-probe project
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Introduction
As demand for network capacity increases, the traditional practice of
over-provisioning of the network becomes impractical. So, there is much
ongoing work to define new protocols and mechanisms for high-speed,
QoS-controlled networking within Internet Protocol (IP) based
environments. This includes work on QoS mechanisms and services (via
DIFFSERV), congestion control mechanisms (e.g. ECN and TCP-like
adaptation for UDP applications) and work on new transport protocols for
specific purposes (e.g. DCCP). However, as these new mechanisms have
been developing, there has not been much activity in trying to observe
and analyse the behaviour of these systems working together, within a
real, integrated networked environment. Additionally, the way in which
applications make use of the new services, mechanisms and protocols have
also not been observed and analysed within a real network environment
using these mechanisms. With the rapidly increasing deployment of IPv6,
it is also vital to consider carefully the differences in behaviour in
the use of these mechanisms compared to IPv4. In this project, we will
have two broad areas of work. Firstly we will, through experimentation
and analysis, examine how DIFFSERV, ECN and decentralised reservation
can be made to operate together in a very high-speed IPv4 and IPv6
environment to support TCP- and UDP-based applications. Secondly, we
will propose ways in which such networks can be instrumented in order to
provide performance and operational data to network operators as well as
users and applications through appropriate APIs and using network
monitoring equipment (developed in the GridProbe project) via
configurable sampling techniques, which will also be developed in the
project. We will examine the performance of the system in a real
networked environment operating at very high speeds (several Gb/s). To
stretch the network services, we intend to test with selected
applications from the e-Science/Grid community with very demanding
needs. Specifically, the selected applications will have requirements
for very high-speed connectivity and QoS-controlled network access.
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