BIQINI – A Flow-Based QoS Enforcement Architecture for NGN Services

Abstract

Abstract. Novel mobile cellular access network technologies like Long Term Evolution (LTE) promise capacities exceeding the ones of existing 3G networks by at least one order of magnitude. This evolution will enable the deployment of services which, due to their capacity requirements, are currently restricted to fixed access networks. On the other hand, packet-switched-only architectures raise the need for a reliable and accurate management of these high access capacities, particularly service-specific Quality of Service (QoS) enforcement, in order to prioritize real-time (voice) services and safeguard a satisfactory Quality of Experience (QoE) to the user. In this paper we present the concept and architecture of a flow-based QoS enforcement architecture called BIQINI which has been developed at the Telecommunications Research Center Vienna (FTW). It consists of a standardcompliant Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) which is supported by an emulated Policy Enforcement Function (PCEF). Extending the FOKUS OpenSource IMS testbed as well as other session-based signaling frameworks, BIQINI's emulated enforcement component enables inexpensive but highly realistic tests on real-time voice and -video traffic, supporting impairments like delay, jitter, loss, and link capacity limitation out-of-the-box. In addition, BIQINI can interface with external policy repositories, thus providing a versatile playground for testing rules and policies in an emulated, realistic environment for real media streams.