User scenarios for Networking Policy Control.

Authors: C. de Laat, L. Gommans

contact: C.T.A.M.deLaat@phys.uu.nl

The purpose of this document is to collect user requirements for Quality of Service enabled networks for different (parts of) applications. This should help discussions in other areas such as the Bandwidth Broker requirements to make sure that the invented solutions will work for certain application and user needs. Please note that the requirements are written on the application layer. They might translate differently to (connection-less) network layers.


Computer based education

In this case the tutor places education material on a server, to which students connect. The students can do this at any time. Depending if video or audio or dynamic applets for a virtual laboratory are embedded in the material, bandwidth requirement are only of the type "throughput". Authentication and authorisation are essential on network and application layer.

Collaboratory

A collaboratory is a setup, which allows experimentators to inspect and control (parts of) an experimental setup from another location using networking facillities. A collaboratory consists of mainly three functional parts: data connections, control connections and groupware. The latter includes A/V systems for videoconferencing and inspection. The three parts generally have different network requirements:

E-commerce

Secure fully authenticated channels. Most probably the speeds and round trip times do not matter, as long as transaction take less than a (few) second and can be overlapped.

Distributed Computing

Connections between a set of (super)computers working together on a computational intensive task. Computers exchange small messages to inform the others of results of computations needed as imput for the next calculations. The computers are effectively waiting at synchronize points for those messages. Therefore, round trip time should be as low as possible. Those meesages are usually not very large, so, bandwidth should not be a big issue.

IP-telephony

Voice over IP. Needs low jitter and low round trip time. Also needs a low but fixed bandwidth. The low bandwidth might be a problem, since nowadays it is a very small fraction of the gigabit linespeeds. Computations of allocation schemes might not have such resolutions.

Video

Video conferencing as a replacement for getting together. Mad, isn't it?

Definitions

PRTT       =    Policy Round Trip Time
BBRTT      =    Bandwidth Broker Round Trip Time
Initiator  =    user side, initiator of the request
Peer(s)    =    site(s) to which user is connecting
 

 Requirements

 
Initiator
Authent
Peer(s)
Authent
Client
pays
Server
pays
BW
RTT
Jitter
Multicast
Packet
loss
allowed
Max
PRTT
dynamical
contract
Computer based education
X
 
X
 
X
 
 
X
 
minuts
 
Collaboratory Data
X
X
X
 
X
X
 
X
 
days
X
Collaboratory Control
X
X
X
 
 
X
 
 
 
days
 
E-commerce
X
X
X
X
 
 
 
 
 
seconds
 
Distributed Computing
X
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
days
X
IP-telephony
X
 
X
 
 
X
X
 
X
seconds
 
 Video P-P
X
 
 
 
VBR
X
X
 
X
seconds
X
Video Group
X
 
 
 
VBR
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Video G-P-P
 
 
 
 
VBR
 
X
X
X
minuts
X