Systems and methods for dynamic quality of service

Abstract

Systems, methods, and apparatus for routing are provided in which a connection track comprising a plurality of network or transport layer packets, received by a router, is identified by examination of header fields of one or more first packets in the plurality of packets. One or more quality of service (QoS) parameters is associated with the connection track by determining whether the track encodes a data type by (i) an identification of a predetermined application protocol used within the one or more first packets and / or (ii) a comparison of a payload of one or more packets in the plurality of packets to known data type formats. A first QoS parameter is set to a first value in a first value range when the connection track contains the first data type. The connection track is routed through the router in accordance with the one or more QoS parameters assigned to the connection track.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]The present application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. to be determined entitled “Systems and Methods for Dynamic Quality of Service,” attorney docket number 12108-001-999, that was filed on May 22, 2007.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to systems and methods for dynamic QoS routing where a connection track comprising data is routed from source to destination by a router path that satisfies the QoS (e.g., bandwidth and delay) requirements of the connection track.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Many IP routers typically support only “best effort” traffic. However, the bandwidth available to people has been increasing rapidly with the advent of broadband access. The result is that many new services are now desired that require better QoS than “best effort” IP can support. Also, with broadband, the problem of controlling the total usage and carrier expense has become important. Thus, it...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014]The present invention overcomes the deficiencies in the prior art. One or more header fields of network layer or transport layer packets, received by a router, are examined and, based on the values found in the header fields, assigned to connection tracks. That is, those packets that are communicating the same message, such as a file, video, or audio, are assigned to the same connection track. Then, advantageously, the data type of the message carried by a connection track is determined and QoS parameters are assigned to the connection track based upon this data type. The connection track is then routed through the router in accordance with the one or more QoS parameters. This process provides the advantage of routing connection tracks based on message data type. This leads to improved router performance. Furthermore, this leads to improved control over the data being routed. For example, at times when the router is receiving too much data, the router can make intelligent decisions on which connection tracks to route and which connection tracks to drop. In one case, assume that the router can only route N streaming videos at any given time and still deliver the streaming video to endpoints in real time. If the router is receiving M connection tracks that each contain real-time streaming video, where M is greater than N, than the router can proactively drop M-N of the connection tracks in order to deliver the N connection tracks in real time to endpoints.

Problems solved by technology

Also, with broadband, the problem of controlling the total usage and carrier expense has become important.

Also, call rejection for high bandwidth streaming services like video is required instead of random discards if quality is to be maintained.

Algorithms such as random early discards (“RED”), which are proportional to the buffer fill, can save the switch from becoming overloaded by such Internet applications, but unfortunately interferes with the QoS of such transmissions.

In one example, for TCP, a conventional network cannot avoid discarding before the user is up to the available rate.

However, the complexity and processing time involved with RSVP negotiation makes RSVP, by itself, unsatisfactory.

However, this protocol has significant limits that preclude DiffServ from providing an effective solution to the problems faced with implementing QoS in an IP network.

There are, however, no QoS definitions to quantify each class, which thereby limits the QoS types that can be supported.

Since the Internet will need to be able to carry a wide variety of QoS types, this quantification limitation greatly restricts the future use of DiffServ-based QoS in large networks.

DiffServ in the IP context also does not allow each packet to be routed with state information associated with each packet.

However, such composite flows may far exceed the routing path's capacity.

In addition, multiple routes cannot be used because of packet ordering problems.

Within such a queue, there would be no way to avoid head-of-line blocking.

Since the queues do not correspond to single micro-flows, weighted fair queuing (“WFQ”) cannot achieve an improvement in such factors as delay variation.

The disadvantage of MPLS, however, like DiffServ, is that the switch can only identify a small set of “standard” QoS patterns, thereby greatly restricting the future services available to a network that requires a wide variety of QoS types to be used.

Furthermore, even though MPLS allows multiple composite flows on multiple routes, there still are restrictions on multiple paths.

Therefore, like DiffServ, when a path becomes overloaded, there is no way to reject new micro-flows or to split the composite flow into micro-flows and use alternative routes.

Another drawback with known QoS systems is that they typically require manual intervention to set up and maintain.

This can be a difficult and time consuming task.

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