An Open Architecture for Evaluating Arbitrary Quality of Service Mechanisms in Software Routers

Abstract

This paper presents an open framework for building and evaluating new Quality of Service elements in a Linux based software router. Conventional QoS behavior, like bucket metering models or scheduling algorithms, have been split up to their elementary components to make the reuse and the variation of them easier. Therefore five kinds of QoS behavior types will be introduced. Based on this pool of the so called Behavior Elements, QoS behavior can be built by combining these basic elements. In the most cases, new QoS behaviors, i.e. new PHBs for the Differentiated Services architecture can be created from existing elementary QoS models. Furthermore, the concept of Hooks is introduced, which are strategic points within network protocols to extended them with QoS behavior. E.g. within the Internet Protocol five Hooks can be identified to access a certain set of packets.