Field-trial of dynamic SLA in diffserv-capable network

Abstract

As the Internet is undergoing substantial changes, there are many demands for the quality of the communication. Differentiated Services was standardized to meet such requirements. Currently, it is assumed that Diffserv is used under static Service Level Agreement (SLA). Under static SLA, the agreement between the service provider and the service subscribers are made as a result of negotiation between human agents. However, the service subscribers, especially individual users, may want dynamic SLA with which they can make their contract without human intervention and use the network resources immediately. Although many literatures addressed this point, operation of dynamic SLA under live network has not been applied. Moreover, only few experiments for dynamic SLA has been made. In this paper, we describe our field-trial with dynamic SLA and resource reservation system at the spring retreat of WIDE Project, including its network configuration and the results of trial. Through this experiment, we attempt to reveal that how users behave with dynamic SLA, and what mechanism such system needs.