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Overview :
The Aricent QoS (Quality of Service) product provides a complete IP Quality of Service solution across VPNs and helps in implementing Service Provisioning Policies for applications or customers, who desire to have an enhanced performance for their traffic on the Internet.
Aricent QoS is used by :
- End-users/Applications to request specific quality of service requirements for their activities or applications, which involve traffic on the Internet.
- Service Providers to offer and deliver service levels to customers, by using the existing high-speed backbone infrastructure (FR, ATM) and to manage end-to-end IP QoS cost-effectively.
- Administrators of Corporate/Enterprise Networks to act as mediators between the end-users and the service providers. A common QoS language defined as Service Level Agreements (SLA) is used by the administrators and the service providers. This defines service classes to be delivered to the end-users.

Figure 1. Aricent QoS Architecture and Interfaces
Aricent QoS implements the Integrated Services (IntServ) and the Differentiated Services (DiffServ) architectures to support QoS facilities, as defined by the IETF.
- Integrated Services
Aricent RSVP, which implements the RSVP Protocol, is the reservation protocol used to perform out-of-band resource reservation signaling along the path. The IntServ Module is pre-integrated with Aricent RSVP. Aricent RSVP is available as a separate product.
IntServ implements the Guaranteed Service Class and the Controlled Load Service Class.
- Differentiated Services
Assured forwarding and Expedited forwarding classes form the major components of the DiffServ implementation. The implementation is however scalable to accommodate new service classes by using the generic traffic classification and conditioning components.
Features :
- Flexible usage of IntServ or Diffserv or both depending on the deployment. This is particularly useful in the case where the enterprise network supports IntServ, since the DiffServ mechanism, by itself, does not provide an end-to-end QoS facility.
- For the VPN edge/border routers, Aricent QoS allows selection of the appropriate QoS model (IntServ or DiffServ) based on the role of the router. Typically, the IntServ framework will fall in to place in this node in order to cater to QoS requests from the hosts of the VPN. Furthermore, RSVP host functions can be enabled, so that the edge router reserves resources on behalf of the VPN hosts.
- In the case of Ingress/Egress nodes of a DS Region/Domain, configurable class mapping from IntServ to DiffServ and vice-versa is provided. This inter-working function is useful in the case of domains, where IntServ and DiffServ co-exist. On the other hand, at the transit routers, which lie inside the DS region/domain, only the core DiffServ component can be enabled.
- The IntServ component implements the RAPI (Reservation Setup API) module which caters to reservation requests from applications to the reservation setup protocol RSVP.
- Apart from the classical WFQ and CBQ mechanisms, hierarchical Queuing mechanism is also implemented.
- Congestion avoidance is performed using the RED algorithm and is accompanied by its variant - the WRED.
- Traffic policing and shaping is performed using the Token Bucket algorithm and/or Leaky Bucket algorithm based on configuration for the flow.
- Supports creation of dynamic SLS based on invocation by the Bandwidth Brokers in the domain. SLA and the TCA configuration can also be specified by a time-window profile, which allows user traffic to be given QoS during a particular period - time-of-day, day, week etc.
- Packaged with MIB support.
- External interfaces are clearly segregated to reduce the porting effort i.e. platform and OS independent implementation.
- Conforms to Future Software Architecture for Portability (FSAP2), thus ensuring highly portable code, which uses flexible buffer and timer management libraries.
Benefits :
Aricent QoSreduces the time to market for OEMs and VARs who wish to incorporate the QoS functionality into their switching/routing devices.
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