QOS for VOIP and DiffServ

Aware MPLS TE
Srinath Beldona
sbeldona@cisco.com






   © 2001, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. |
 Prerequisities

 Knowledge of
IP Routing
IP QOS ( DiffServ/IntServ)
Basic MPLS and MPLS TE



   © 2001, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 

 Agenda

 Critical Resource Requirements for Voice Over IP

 Over Provisioning the backbone
 VOIP and importance of DiffServ
 MPLS TE and DiffServ
 Relationship between MPLS TE and IP QOS
 MPLS DiffServ Aware TE
 Conclusion



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 Characterizing an VOIP Service

 Metrics
Loss
Latency, Jitter
Sequence Preservation
Throughput, good put
Availability
 Definition of this metric
deterministic



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 One-Way Latency

 The time between reception of an IP packet at an ingress

POP and its transmission at an egress POP
 Comprised of four components:
Propagation delay: ~5ms/1000km for fibre
Switching / processing delay: typically 10-20µs per packet
Scheduling / queuing delay
Serialisation delay: dependent upon line rate: 6ms for 1500
byte packet at 2Mbps, 80µs at STM-1, 1.25µs at STM-64
 VoIP target one-way delay bound of 150ms (G.114)
 RTT target of 250ms is common for interactive business
data applications



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 One-Way Jitter

 Delay variation generally computed as the

variation of the delay for two consecutive
packets
 Comprised of the variation in the components of
delay:
Propagation delay
Switching / processing delay
Queuing / scheduling delay
 Jitters buffers remove variation but contribute to
delay



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 VoIP Jitter Budget for the Backbone

 Typical jitter budget:

=> Mouth to ear budget 100ms
=> Backbone propagation ± 30ms
=> Codec delay ± ~35ms
=> Jitter Budget = 35ms
 Jitter budget allocation:
30ms for the access
5ms for the core => 10 hops => 500 µs/hop



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 One-Way Loss Rate

 The probability that a packet will be dropped in

transit between receipt at an ingress POP and
transmission at an egress POP
Observation: A US backbone typically offers a monthly
average loss on its network of < 1%
 Typical targets for VoIP of < 0.25% loss
 Packet loss impacts attainable TCP throughput



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 Per flow sequence preservation

 Re-ordering Impact on Service Perception

Long-Lived TCP: reduced goodput
From [ref: LAOR] based on measurements and
analysis
Real-time video: loss rate += OOS_rate
VoIP:
Magnitude of re-sequencing has to be significant to
affect flow with inter-packet gap of 10ms
But contribute to Jitter
 Best-practise IP Design: per-flow loadbalacing!



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 Typical Core Per Class SLA Characteristics

Through- Avail- Loss

Class Delay Jitter
put ability rate
VoIP 0 0 0 0 0
Bus 0 0 0 ?
BE 0 0

Typically more Classes at the Edge



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 OverProvisioning the Backbone

The Key is to Over Provisioning Offer must

be higher than Demand
 The service that traffic receives is dependent
upon the ratio of traffic load to available capacity
 More Bandwidth (offer) than traffic (demand)
means
Low loss
Low Latency
Low Jitter
 Refs: [ROBERTS], [CHARNY], [BONALD]


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 Drawback

 Fate Sharing!
No isolation between VPN, VoIP, Internet
 Expensive
design for the aggregate!



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 Our recommendation: use DiffServ!

 Better QOS for VOIP traffic

Service Isolation
 Cheaper
Overprovisioning per Class!
OP(VoIP) > 3 or 4
OP(Bus) > 2
OP(Int) > 1.2
 Mature Technology



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 Service Isolation

DSCP ECN

 DiffServ Per-Hop Behavior

Expedited Forwarding
Low-latency/jitter scheduler (often a PQ)
Assured Forwarding
Bandwidth allocation and Multi-level
Congestion avoidance (RED)



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 Diffserv Architecture: RFC2475
Diffserv Domain

VoIP Bus Best-

Effort
VoIP
Packet ³colour´ Bus
In DSCP Best-
Classification and Effort
conditioning (meter,
Aggregate PHBs in
marking, policing)
CORE (EF, AF, DF)
at EDGE


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 MPLS and Diffserv

 However, using MPLS capabilities for

traffic engineering provides us with some
extra tools for engineering the QoS of our
backbone:
Traffic Engineering
Diffserv-aware traffic engineering
Fast Re-route



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 Traffic Engineering: The Problem

R1 Path for R1 to R3 traffic =

Path for R2 to R3 traffic =

R3

R2

 Conventional IP routing uses pure destination-based forwarding

 Conventional IGP path computation is selected based upon a
simple additive metric
Bandwidth availability is not taken into account
 Some links may be congested while others are underutilized


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 Constraint-Based Routing

 IP QoS has typically assumed complete

separation of routing and QoS
Routing determines the path, QoS determines resource
allocation on the path

 What about picking a path with appropriate

resources?
Constraint-based routing: Picking a path that meets
certain constraints (e.g. sufficient BW, low delay)



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 MPLS Traffic Engineering
R1

R3

R2

 MPLS Traffic Engineering Provides an ³explicit´ routing

capability (a.k.a. ³source routing´) at Layer 3
 Uses constraint based routing to allow paths to be used
other than the IGP shortest path
 MPLS TE label switched paths (termed ³traffic
engineering tunnels´) are used to steer traffic through the
network


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 MPLS TE Components in One Slide

1. Link state IGP advertises ³unreserved capacity´

and administrative attributes per link
2. Constraints (required bandwidth and policy) are
specified for a TE ³tunnel´
3. Constraint based routing ± to route a tunnel, prune
the unsuitable links from the topology and pick
shortest path on the remaining topology
i.e. links that violate a constraint
4. Use RSVP to route the trunk and do admission
control
5. MPLS LSPs used for forwarding



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 Relationship Between MPLS TE and QoS
 MPLS TE designed to improve backbone efficiency
independently of QoS:
MPLS TE compute routes for aggregates across all PHBs
MPLS TE performs admission control using ³global´
bandwidth pool
Unaware of bandwidth allocated to each queue
 MPLS TE and MPLS Diffserv:
Can run simultaneously and independently
TE distributes aggregate load
Diffserv provides QoS differentiation
Are unaware of each other, i.e. no per-class admission
control in TE)



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 Delay / Utilization Trade-Off
Delay

h

h
Utilization
0% K% É % 100%

If I can keep EF traffic < K % , I will keep EF delay under h ms

If I can keep AF1 traffic < É % , I will keep AF1 delay under h
ms


   © 2001, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 
 Motivation for DS-Aware TE

 Additional constraints could ensure QoS of each

class:
Good EF behavior requires EF load < K %
Good AF behavior requires AF load < %
 Cannot be enforced by current aggregate TE
 Requires Diffserv aware TE
Constraint-based routing per class with different bandwidth
constraints
Admission control per class over different bandwidth pools



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 DS-TE Bandwidth Pools

Global TE Bandwidth Pool

Reflects Total Link Capacity

Sub-pool Reflects
EF Class Queue
Capacity

Each pool may have different over- or under-

booking ratios



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 Diffserv-aware TE (DS-TE)

 Introduces a separate bandwidth pool for

constraint based routing of ³Guaranteed´ traffic
Termed the ³sub-pool´ as opposed to ³global-pool´
Allows us to ensure that ³Guaranteed´ traffic is always
below specified %
 Sub-pool represents a more restrictive
bandwidth pool for sub-pool tunnels
is used for constraint-based routing and admission of
sub-pool tunnels
reflects the bandwidth of a Diffserv queue dedicated to
sub-pool tunnels



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 Protocol extensions for DS-TE
 IGP extensions for DS-TE:
Advertise ³unreserved TE bandwidth´ (at each pre-
emption level) for each Class-Type
Class-Type: a group of Diffserv classes sharing the
same bandwidth constraint (e.g. AF1x and AF2x)
 RSVP extensions for DS-TE:
Also signal the Class-Type
Perform Class-Type-aware admission control
 Constraint-based routing for DS-TE:
Same algorithm but compute path over links with
sufficient ³unreserved bandwidth´ for the relevant
class-type



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 MPLS Guaranteed Bandwidth
Framework

 Diffserv ensures that scheduling bandwidth is

set aside on each link in the network for sub-pool
traffic
 DS-TE routing and admission control ensures
that the sub-pool tunnel follows a path that has
the needed BW in the LLQ / mDRR queues on
every link
 Per-VoIP-trunk policing at the edge ensures that
the traffic directed onto the sub-pool tunnel is
less than the capacity of the tunnel



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 Voice Trunking Summary

Class 5
PSTN ź
legacy switches
Traditional TDM
Central
Central Network
Traditional Office Office Traditional
Telephony Telephony

MPLS Network
VoIP VoIP
Gateway Gateway
Toll Bypass
Voice Trunking
PE GB Tunnel PE

PE PE
Regular TE
CE Tunnel CE
Enterprise Enterprise
LAN LAN

PE PE
VPN Service

Legend
Internet Internet GB-TE Tunnel
Enterprise Access Access Enterprise Regular TE Tunnel
Internet Service LAN Router Router LAN Physical Link



   © 2001, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 

 Conclusion

 DiffServ enables EF, AF allows service differentiation for VOIP

and ensures lower jitter and delay through EF queuing
 MPLS TE optimizes the backbone efficiency
Higher service availability targets to be with existing backbone bw
achieving the existing service targets with less backbone bw
Suited for asymetrical networks with high volatility of load and
potential long lead times for recapacity planning
 By combining DS-TE with Diffserv mechanisms on each link, the
service provider can meet VOIP QOS for EF class traffic with
admission control without large over-provisioning of capacity.
Specifically suited for networks where conventional IP routing
would lead to high EF load per link



   © 2001, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 

 References

 [BONALD]
³Statistical Guarantees for Streaming Flows Using Expedited
Forwarding´, Thomas Bonald, et al, INFOCOM 2001
 [CASNER]
³A fine-grained view of high-performance networking´,
Stephen Casner et al, Packet Design, NANOG 22
 [CHARNY]
³Delay bounds in networks with aggregate scheduling´,
Anna Charny, Jean-Yves Le Boudec, April 14 2001



   © 2001, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 

 References
 [DUFFIELD]
³A Flexible Model for Resource Management in Virtual Private
Networks´, N. G. Duffield et al, SIGCOMM¶99
 [LAOR]
³Effect of Packet Reordering in a Backbone Link on Applications
Throughput´, IEEE paper by Michael Laor ± to be published
 [MATHIS]
³The Macroscopic Behavior of the TCP Congestion Avoidance
Algorithm´, Matthew Mathis, Computer Communication Review,
July 1997
 [ROBERTS]
³Traffic Theory and the Internet´, IEEE Communications Magazine,
January 2001
 [TELKAMP]



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 Thank You

Q&A



   © 2001, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.