US 8,301,744 B2Granted

Systems and methods for QoS provisioning and assurance for point-to-point SIP sessions in DiffServ-enabled MPLS networks

AssigneeTelcordia Technologies, Inc.

InventorsTony Bogovic, Shrirang Gadgil, Gi Tae Kim, Narayanan Natarajan, Abdelhakim Hafid

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Abstract

Systems and methods for efficiently provisioning and assuring Quality of Service (QoS) between user networks communicating over a DiffServ-enabled network, with QoS management transparency to SIP user agents. The system comprises user networks communicating via a core network, each user network having a source and destination SIP user agent respectively, a SIP proxy server between the source SIP user agent and destination SIP user agent, a Bandwidth Manager to provision a pipe between the source user network and the destination user network, wherein the pipe has a specified bandwidth, and a QoS Agent for accepting and/or rejecting a SIP session based on availability of bandwidth in the pipe; wherein the SIP proxy server is configured to forward an incoming SIP request to the QoS Agent. The method comprises provisioning a pipe between the SIP user agents or their respective user networks, and allowing/rejecting incoming SIP sessions based on the available bandwidth in the pipe.

Claims11

Dependent claims

A system executed by a computer for transparently assuring quality of service (QoS) for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) users and applications in a SIP session between a source user network and a destination user network communicating via a Differentiated Services (DiffServ) core network, each user network having a source and destination SIP user agent respectively, the system comprising:

a Bandwidth Manager to provision pipes in the core network between source user networks and destination user networks, wherein each pipe is configured to transport a plurality of traffic flows of a plurality of DiffServ classes that are communicated via SIP sessions between a source user network and a destination user network;
a QoS Agent for accepting and/or rejecting a SIP session by checking for availability of bandwidth in the pipe for each incoming traffic flow of the SIP session first for the default DiffServ class for the traffic flow and if that bandwidth is not available then checking for bandwidth availability for the degraded class for the traffic flow as specified by the Session QoS Degradation policy, admitting the flow only if bandwidth is available either for its default DiffServ class or for its degraded DiffServ class, and reconfiguring the marking policies for an admitted flow in the ingress Session Border Controller if the flow is admitted in its degraded DiffServ class;
where the QoS Agent determines the session bandwidth requirement from a header in an incoming SIP Invite message, increases or decreases the bandwidth of the pipe based on a plurality of predetermined policies on high and low thresholds on pipe bandwidth allocated to SIP sessions, pipe bandwidth increments and pipe bandwidth decrements;
a Session Border Controller between each user network and the core network to police an incoming packet and mark said incoming packet with Differentiated Services (DiffServ) code points based on policies configured by the QoS Agent;
and
a SIP proxy server between the source SIP user agent and destination SIP user agent, wherein the SIP proxy server is configured to forward all incoming SIP requests to the QoS Agent.

3 more elements

A method operable on a computer for assuring Quality of Service (QoS) in a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) session between at least two user networks communicating across a Differentiated Services (DiffServ)-enabled core network, the method comprising:

provisioning a pipe in the core network between each of the at least two user networks, said pipe having a bandwidth for each of a plurality of DiffServ types for traffic that are communicated via SIP sessions between the said user networks;
checking for availability of bandwidth in the pipe for each incoming traffic flow of the SIP session first for the default DiffServ class for the traffic flow and if that is not available then checking for bandwidth availability for the degraded class for the traffic flow as specified by the Session QoS Degradation policy;
admitting the flow only if bandwidth is available either for its default DiffServ class or for its degraded DiffServ class;
reconfiguring the marking policies for an admitted flow in the ingress Session Border Controller if the flow is admitted in its degraded DiffServ class;
keeping track of available bandwidth on each pipe in the core network for each DiffServclass configured on the pipe, and either increasing the bandwidth provisioned for the class in the pipe if the pipe bandwidth allocated to SIP sessions goes above the high threshold or decreasing the bandwidth provisioned for the class in the pipe if the pipe bandwidth allocated to SIP sessions goes below the low threshold.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 12/188,421Filed 8 Aug 2008
Published: US 2010/0036953 A111 Feb 2010
Granted: 30 Oct 2012
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification8 codes

H04L 65/80
Network arrangements, protocols or services for supporting real-time applications in data packet communication: responding to QoS
H04L 45/30
Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks: routing of multiclass traffic
H04L 45/50
Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks: using label swapping, e.g. multi-protocol label switch [MPLS]
H04L 47/785
Distributed allocation of resources, e.g. bandwidth brokers: among multiple network domains, e.g. multilateral agreements