Differentiated Services Example Advantages Of DiffServ

DiffServ deals with bulk flows of data rather than single flows and single reservations. This means that a single negotiation will be made for all of the packets from, for example, a single ISP, or a single university. The contracts resulting from these negotiations are called " service level agreements", and will inevitably involve money changing hands. These service level agreements will specify what classes of traffic will be provided, what guarantees are needed for each class, and how much data will be sent for each class.

A "DiffServ cloud" is a collection of DiffServ routers. When packets enter a DiffServ cloud they are first classified by the sender. The sender sets the " type of service" field (which hence is also called DiffServ Code Point - DSCP), in the IP header according to the class of the data, so that the better classes get higher numbers.

As the packets enter the DiffServ cloud they are policed by the receiver. If there is so much traffic that it breaches the service level agreement, then the sender may be liable for fines, according to the details of the contract. Within the DiffServ cloud, all the individual routers need to do is to give highest priority to the packets with the highest value in the type of service field, which is simple to implement. There may also be a discard policy on the frequencies with which each type of packet is discarded if the router runs out of buffer space.

1 Example

There are many ways to split up traffic into classes. For example, the traffic may be split into Gold, Silver, and Bronze classes. In each router, Gold traffic takes precedence over Silver traffic, which takes precedence over Bronze.

There are also many other schemes involving hybrids of these and other Quality of Service strategies.

2 Advantages of DiffServ

One advantage of DiffServ, is that all the policing and classifying is done at the boundaries between DiffServ clouds. This means that in the core of the Internet, routers can get on with doing the job of routing, and not care about the complexities of collecting payment or enforcing agreements.

3 Examples of good use of traffic classification with rationing

Traffic classification is needed especially anywhere there are network bottlenecks. In deciding how traffic should be classified, one might ask "Who has gigabit WAN (ADSL, modem) or a wireless gigabit connection?" - the answer, at least for now, is probably not many users. TCP/IP will use all available bandwidth until TCP experiences packet loss or severe delay- but TCP/IP does not know about delicate interactive traffic! That is how TCP was designed and TCP is a successful protocol. The interactive protocols suffers however. Here are examples of practical implementations of traffic policies:

lartc.org: The Wonder Shaper Comment: Traffic shaping are used with traffic class bandwidth guarantees and traffic classification (Here DiffServ could be used).
Quote: "...

Results

Before, without wondershaper, while uploading:

round-trip min/avg/max = 2041.4/2332.1/2427.6 ms

After, with wondershaper, during [traffic shaped] 220kbit/s upload:

round-trip min/avg/max = 15.7/51.8/79.9 ms

Goals

I attempted to create the holy grail:

Maintain low latency for interactive traffic at all times

This means that downloading or uploading files should not disturb SSH or even telnet. These are the most important things, even 200ms latency is sluggish to work over.

Allow 'surfing' at reasonable speeds while up or downloading

Even though http is 'bulk' traffic, other traffic should not drown it out too much.

Make sure uploads don't harm downloads, and the other way around

This is a much observed phenomenon where upstream traffic simply destroys download speed. It turns out that all this is possible, at the cost of a tiny bit of bandwidth...."

3.1 Another example

ADSL Bandwidth Management HOWTO Quote: "...If you initiate an FTP upload to saturate upstream bandwidth, you should only notice your ping times to the gateway (on the other side of the DSL line) increasing by a small amount compared to what it would increase to with no priority queuing...."

3.2 Another one

cbq.init
description: sets up CBQ-based traffic control Quote: "...First of all - this is just a SIMPLE EXAMPLE of CBQ power...." The DiffServ model could be used here.

4 Disadvantages of DiffServ

4.1 End-to-end and peering problems

One disadvantage is that the details of how individual routers deal with the type of service field is somewhat arbitrary, and it is difficult to predict end-to-end behaviour. This is complicated further if a packet crosses two or more DiffServ clouds before reaching its destination.

From a commercial viewpoint, this is a major flaw, as it means that it is impossible to sell different classes of end-to-end connectivity to end users, as one provider's Gold packet may be another's Bronze. Internet operators could fix this, by enforcing standardised policies across networks, but are not keen on adding new levels of complexity to their already complex peering agreements. One of the reasons for this is set out below.

4.2 DiffServ vs. more capacity

The greatest disadavantage of DiffServ is that at the very highest level, it can be regarded as a technical solution for a technical problem which does not exist.

Since DiffServ is simply a mechanism for deciding which packets to delay or drop at the expense of others in a situation where there is not enough network capacity, consider that when DiffServ is working by dropping packets selectively, traffic on the link in question must already be very close to saturation. Any further increase in traffic will result in Bronze services being taken out altogether. Since Internet traffic is highly bursty, this is almost certain to happen on a regular basis if traffic on a link is near the limit at which DiffServ becomes needed.

For this reason, many people think that DiffServ will always be inferior to adding sufficient network capacity to avoid packet loss on all classes of traffic.

As of 2003, there is a glut of fibre capacity in most parts of the telecoms market, with it being far easier and cheaper to add more capacity than to employ elaborate DiffServ policies as a way of increasing customer satisfaction. In fact, this is what is generally done in the core of the Internet, which is generally fast and dumb with "fat pipes" connecting its routers.

4.3 DiffServ as rationing

Hence, DiffServ is for most ISPs only a way of rationing customer network utilisation to allow greater overbooking of their existing capacity. A good example of this is the use of DiffServ tools to suppress peer-to-peer traffic, because of its ability to saturate customer links indefinitely, disrupting the ISP's business model which relies on 1%-10% link utilization for most customers.

5 See also

Internet architecture

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