QoS Management in Multiservice Packet Networks

Nowadays, the convergence of voice and data communications over a single network infrastructure is the most appealing objective for the network operators. This requires appropriate network control tools that allow guaranteeing different QoS levels for each provided service. To this aim there has been considerable activities within international organizations for standardization bringing to different possible solutions. Among these the ATM is the most consolidated offering the capability of integrating multiple services onto a common backbone network. Whatever the adopted transport solution, in multiservice network the monitoring of the system in terms of performance and resource allocation is essential for the provisioning of the contracted QoS level. This article discusses this issue and presents a methodology for QoS management describing the key indicators used for performance monitoring, the procedure to collect the data from the network and the use of a simulation tool to support network design and troubleshooting. The validation of the procedure is made on a practical case study executed on the Ericsson Engine solution for ATM multiservice network.