xQoS Systems

The xQoS project has the dual goal of developing improved Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms for the Internet and a virtual lab called IREEL for experimenting with computer networks over a web interface.

We are developing new protocols to replace TCP and UDP for the transport layer in IP networks and wireless networks. The current protocols do not support the effective use of QoS over these networks, so a new system is needed to make IP networks perform more reliably, particularly with real-time multimedia applications. xQoS is working with EuQoS, a large European project, thus accessing a test bed for validation and demonstration of xQoS outputs. The new protocols are being submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for standardisation.

The Internet Remote Emulation Experimentation Laboratory (IREEL) is being developed to allow people to experiment with computer network algorithms without having to know a lot about computers and operating systems.

Context of the project

The xQoS project is associated to the European EuQoS project. Quality of service (QoS) is about providing a predictable service, qualitatively and quantitatively, at the network layer. QoS has been the focus of a large corpus of research over the last decade. The most visible end-user application is Resource Reservation, where applications and ultimately end-users can negotiate with the network resources such as bandwidth or delay guarantees.

The EuQoS project is about making QoS happen out of the lab, into a large-scale experimental testbed. EuQoS build upon the last 10 years of QoS research and standardization efforts to design and build an pan-european end-to-end QoS system. To achieve this, the project teams up several major european telecommunication operators (e.g. France Telecom, Telefonica) together with academics to design, implement and deploy the EuQoS system over the GEANT core network and a large set of heterogeneous networks.

In this context, NICTA is involved in the design, implementation and testing of a QoS-capable transport layer and in experimentation, education and standardization activities.

What will this research achieve?

Multimedia services over the internet and wireless networks will be improved. Currently video conference calls over the internet can be of low quality or even drop out. The new mechanisms will allow such calls with good or perfect quality and thus contribute to the sustainability of the internet as a public infrastructure. Mission critical services such as telemedicine, power plant control and monitoring systems will be able to use cheap, available networking infrastructure. And IREEL will be a valuable tool for researching, teaching and developing services and applications that require specific network performance.

Who will benefit?

Initially standardization at IETF, which means the industry will benefit. Ultimately the end-users of multimedia services such as voice calls, video conferencing and telemedicine over the internet.

What are the key features?

  • Improved multimedia services over the internet
  • Improved multimedia services over wireless networks
  • IREEL will educate students about computer networks
  • IREEL will provide an experimental platform for multimedia application designers without having to understand a lot about computer networks
  • The project will allow multimedia applications to fully use QoS services provided by networks. For example, if a user pays for a 1Mbps connection, it will ensure they can use the full bandwidth.

Progress update

  • Two IETF protocol drafts submitted
  • Many research papers published
  • IREEL up and running and being used

Research team

Publications

Journals

  1. IREEL: Remote Experimentation with Real Protocols and Applications over Emulated Network, Laurent Dairaine, Guillaume Jourjon, Emmanuel Lochin, Sebastien Ardon
    To appear in June 2007 issue (Volume 39, Number 2) of ACM's inroad SIGCSE Bulletin
  2. Optimization of TFRC loss history initialization, Guillaume Jourjon, Emmanuel Lochin, Laurent Dairaine, IEEE Communication Letters, Vol 11, num 3, March 2007
  3. gTFRC, a TCP Friendly QoS-aware Rate Control for Diffserv Assured Service, Emmanuel Lochin, Laurent Dairaine, Guillaume Jourjon, Springer Telecommunication Systems Journal, 10.1007/s11235-006-9004-2, ISSN : 1018-4864 (Print) 1572-9451 (Online), Sep 2006

Conferences

  1. Towards sender-based TFRC, Guillaume Jourjon, Emmanuel Lochin, Patrick Senac
    IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2007), Glasgow, UK - 24-27 June, 2007 - Best paper award of the Multimedia Communications & Home Services Symposium of ICC 2007
  2. Study and enhancement of DCCP over DiffServ Assured Forwarding class, Emmanuel Lochin, Guillaume Jourjon, Laurent Dairaine, The 4th European Conference on Universal Multiservice Networks (ECUMN 2007), Toulouse, France - 14-16 February, 2007
  3. Towards a Versatile Transport Protocol , Guillaume Jourjon, Emmanuel Lochin, Patrick Senac, The 2nd Conference on Future Networking Technologies (CoNext 2006), Student Workshop - Lisboa, Portugal - 4-7 December 2006
  4. Implementation and performance analysis of a QoS-aware TFRC mechanism, Guillaume Jourjon, Emmanuel Lochin, Laurent Dairaine, Patrick Senac, Tim Moors, Aruna Seneviratne, The 14th IEEE International Conference on Networks (ICON2006) Singapore, 13-15 September 2006
  5. IREEL: Remote Experimentation with Real Protocols and Applications over Emulated Network, Laurent Dairaine, Ernesto Exposito, Guillaume Jourjon, Pierre Casenove, Feiselia Tan, Emmanuel Lochin, The Eleventh Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ACM ITiCSE 2006 - poster session) University of Bologna, Italy 26-28 June 2006
  6. gTFRC: a QoS-aware congestion control algorithm, Emmanuel Lochin, Laurent Dairaine, Guillaume Jourjon, The 5th International Conference on Networking (ICN'2006), Mauritius - April, 2006
  7. Modeling, Simulation, and Emulation of QoS Oriented Transport Mechanisms, Guillaume Jourjon, Ernesto Exposito and Laurent Dairaine, CONext 2005 in cooperation with ACM Sigcomm (poster), Toulouse, France - October 2005
  8. Reducing Satellite Communication Cost Using Terrestrial Peer to Peer to Recover Losts, Florestan de Belleville and Laurent Dairaine and Mathieu Gineste and Christian Fraboul, 23rd AIAA ICSSC (International Communication Satellite
    Systems Conference), Rome, Italy - September 2005
  9. Active Emulation of a DVB-RCS Satellite Link in an End-to-end QoS-oriented Heterogeneous Network, Mathieu Gineste and Hervé Thalmensy and Laurent Dairaine and Patrick Sénac and Michel Diaz, 23rd AIAA ICSSC (International Communication Satellite
    Systems Conference), Rome, Italy - September 2005
  10. The QoSxLabel : A Quality of Service Cross Layer Label, Ernesto Exposito and Laurent Dairaine and Mathieu Gineste, 3rd IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics, INDIN’05, August 2005, Perth, Australia
  11. Using the XQoS Platform for designing and developing the QoS-Seeker System, E. Exposito, R. Malaney, X. Wei, D. Nghia, 3rd IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics, INDIN'05, August 2005, Perth, Australia

IETF drafts

  1. Guidelines for a sender-based TFRC - Version 00, Guillaume Jourjon and Emmanuel Lochin and Patrick Senac, Internet Draft draft-jourjon-tsvwg-sender-based-tfrc-00 - Oct, 2006
  2. Guaranteed TCP Friendly Rate Control (gTFRC) for DiffServ/AF Network - Version 02,
    Emmanuel Lochin and Laurent Dairaine and Guillaume Jourjon, Internet Draft - draft-lochin-ietf-tsvwg-gtfrc-02 - Aug, 2006