On Tue, 29 May 2001, Ukyo Kuonji wrote:
--- Sean Doran Wrote ---
In the absence of such a document, from which anyone can build an interoperable "true" "end to end" QoS system into his or her product, I am tempted to believe that such buzzwords are weapons in a DoS attack by marketroids.
Yeah, I have to agree with you there. I have long been of the opinion that all these are spouted off by marketing types and ATM biggots. As far as I am concerned, a properly designed and run network makes QoS and MPLS more a hassle than a benefit.
Constrain a network to a homogeneous application set, and then make sure that expectations for reliability and consistent performance are low, you can probably design it any way you'd like. Look at how telcos handled (whether done well or not) multiple traffic types. Typical telco has multiple networks, usually ultimately based on a voice-oriented technology (SONET, TDM, ATM), with application-layer integrations at some limited points (ie frame-relay<->ATM internetworking, ISDN<->frame-relay, DSL<->ATM, modem->ATM offloading). Some telcos have financial disincentives to adopting new technology, but they still have demonstrated not only the need for QoS in a multi-service network, but some of the benefits of interconnecting networks to gain from economies of scale and statistical multiplexing.
TDM. What flavour would you like? SONET/SDH? PDH? "Virtual >dark fibre"? ITU-Grid optics?
That works very well for always on type service, but in reality, these type of services are not always on. They are periodic, at best, and the time between the periods can be hours to days. Right now they ARE over TDM, but TDM is expensive to supply (payback time and all). Data services (ATM or IP) has a much better payback time. And if you can get the stat mux gain, all the better.
Voice-over-IP benefits from statistical multiplexing as much, if not moreso, than any other application. A toll-quality voice call runs at ~5-6kbps (factoring silence suppression and RTP header compression) vs. 8kbps across compressed TDM. The VoIP QoS problem is interesting. Barring congestion in the network, VoIP just has a problem with the fact that IP communications are frame-oriented (and a VoIP packet gets behind a 1536-byte Ethernet frame in the transmit queue). Frame-oriented protocols make sense for shared media like Ethernet, but why couldn't a point-to-point link (or other 'exclusive' media) allow a (low-overhead) byte- or cell-oriented mode as well as frame-oriented mode. VoIP would get along much better. Pete.