Overview of diffserv technology: Its mechanism and implementation

Abstract

On the Internet, a Quality of Service (QoS) guaranteed services are increasingly being demanded, and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is developing the specification documents for the QoS services intensively. This overview details the technical rationales underlining the contents of the specification documents developed by the IETF for Differentiated Services (DiffServ)-to provide QoS guarantee services in the large IP networks- and Policy Framework-to manage DiffServ compliant networks. The IP networks with DiffServ consist of boundary routers and interior routers. These routers are composed of packet classifiers and marker, shaper, and policing function. Many vendors have developed DiffServ-compliant routers with gigabit interfaces. An example of an implementation of a DiffServ-compliant router and a demonstration of a QoS service using this router are presented here. The Policy Framework is expected to be one of the promising management solutions to co-operate with and manage many DiffServ-compliant routers. An experiment that adopts the Policy Framework to a DiffServ compliant network is also outlined.