Approaches for Offering QoS and Specialized Traffic Treatment for WebRTC

Abstract

International audienceReal-time communications are much more than only traditional voice services. They have become interactive, transversal and are expected to be integrated as a feature of other applications. More and more communications services are offered by web companies that have been taking advantage of Internet flat rate charges and mostly use best-effort capabilities. Simultaneously, many efforts are currently devoted to improve the quality of experience of clients using communication services. The paper analyses current implementations of managed VoIP and emerging WebRTC technology in order to assess the possibility of offering specialized media flow treatments to real-time web communications. It proposes two research approaches: "in-network" and "over-the-network" and several elements that could contribute to an overall solution allowing web communication services to benefit from specialized network services

A case-study in all-web rich interpersonal communication services

“…Early proposals such as the GCC congestion control scheme have been shown to require further enhancements [11]. On a different level, one can imagine network infrastructure-level QoS management mechanisms being provided by specialists, with APIs and peer agreements allowing user-facing providers to make use of the assured QoS to provide enhanced "quality of experience" [9,12]. Whatever the solution, we now that users ultimately perceive the service quality as a whole, hence the crucial need to collaborate at all levels to achieve a proper QoE.…”

On webco interoperability

“…Beyond that, telcos can target opportunities to be providers in domains supporting web communications, related to identity & authentication, security, QoS, charging and billing facilities, platform providers, virtualized dedicated services, etc. [6,10,17,21] Promoting a federation of interoperable webco services could thus help telcos market these support offers and probably increase cross-sales. The credo of the ReThink project [17] is targeted towards such a "need for an open and standardized enabling platform".…”

“…QoS has scant relevance but end-to-end. In situations where communications are based on internet transport, provided by heterogeneous operators, it remains a technical challenge to ensure end-to-end guarantees [6,10].…”