EU IST Ambient Network

GMPLS Management

Firewall and NAT Control

Next Steps in Signalling (NSIS)

IST NGN-LAB

A project financed by the fifth European research framework programme. I was working on the proposal, contract preparation, and I am now responsible (project manager within NEC) for the project starting Jan. 2001 (project start).

Differentiated Services and QoS Control in the Internet

The emergence of distributed multimedia applications and the growing mission-critical use of the Internet highlights the need for more reliable, secure and high performance communications and delivery of services. The challenge of supporting a variety of applications with differing characteristics and requirements at adequate service levels has led to the development of Quality of Service (QoS) technologies and enabling mechanisms in the past few years. Traffic engineering and dynamic control of resources in the network to deliver the required QoS for applications, and network wide provisioning, administration, monitoring and control of QoS, have become key capabilities for Internet Service Providers.

We are developing the architectural concepts and framework for QoS Control in IP networks. QoS control that is directly linked to user services and needs, will offer a more compelling value proposition to service providers. The proposed architecture includes support of user-level policies, which are envisioned as translations from Service Level Agreements in part or as a whole, as well as support of network-wide management policies, which a service provider typically needs to implement.

I was involved as a technical leader in planning, design, and building various prototypes addressing the challenges of providing guaranteed services to customers. The work includes service provisioning, service specification, service negotiation, and appropriate network configuration and management tools.

Other projects in the area of Differentiated Services are: (1) EURESCOM P1006 DISCMAN (May 00 - March 01): The project addressed control and management issues in DiffServ/MPLS networks. I attended some meetings and did minor paper work. (2) Linux-DiffServ implementation in collaboration with the University of Bern in Switzerland (April 00 - now): I was in charge of the project from NEC. The tasks includes supervision of the project and the definition of the 3rd year work plan.

Policy-based Management

Based on the IETF Policy Framework, we work on policy-based management of MPLS networks. The purpose of this work is to describe an information model for representing MPLS policies, including MPLS for traffic engineering and QoS. The policy-based management approach is used to facilitate efficient and reliable network operations in an MPLS domain. For the QoS-related part, the Policy Framework QoS Information Model of the IETF Policy Framework WG is extended with new classes for controlling and managing the lifecycle of Label Switched Paths (LSPs) and for mapping of traffic onto existing LSPs. This information model may be used by a management system to optimize network performance through the necessary network provisioning actions.

Additionally, I was working at the "Policy Core Information Model Extension", where we brough in the experience with the MPLS model to enhance the core model with more generic mechanisms, and add some elements to be used as toolkit for submodels in various areas of policy-based management.

Service Management in a Telecom Environment based on Active Network Technology

Active networking, where network nodes perform customized processing of packets, is a rapidly expanding field of research. This project is based on the assumption that active networking technology will mature to a point where it can be commercially deployed on a larger scale. We investigate the realization of service provisioning and service management in a telecom environment that is based on active networking technology, primarily with respect to customer-provider interactions. Compared to conventional networking technology, active networking concepts enable additional flexibility in supporting management tasks. We outline a framework that allows customers, on the one hand, to access and manage a service in a providerÕs domain, and, on the other hand, to outsource a service and its management to a service provider. Our framework has the properties of supporting (1) generic, i.e., service-independent, interfaces for service provisioning and management, and (2) customized service abstractions and control functions, according to a customer's requirements. Further, we describe how some of the key concepts of this framework can be realized in an active networking testbed that we built.

The Telepoly Project(German)

The Telepoly project was started as a teleteaching project between ETH Zurich and EPF Lausanne. In the mean time various other locations have been added. The project uses an ATM infrastructure for the transmision of high-quality audio and video streams (bi-directonal, multi-point distrubution of 3 A/V-streams). Especially, the very good audio quality makes the system useful for interactive, symoultaneous teleteaching in real lecturing ennvironments.

Broadband Exchange for Trans-European USage

The goal of the project is to take further the initial steps taken in the are a of teleteaching by the BETEL application towards a full-fledged CSCW application. To that effect the major enhancement will be the development of functions sup porting distributed group work in addition to the teleteaching support. The set of functions that will be developed in the project are best captured by the so-c alled virtual community paradigm. In case of BETEUS the operations can consist o f working, teaching, learning, project management and technical design.

Coordination, Implementation and Operation of multimedia services (CIO)

RACE Project R2060 JVTOS (Joint Viewing and Tele-Operation Service) is a teleservice developped by the CIO partners. It enables two or more persons to commonly use any application software at the same time on different workstations (Suns, SGIs, Macs and PCs).

The application has to be available on one of the participating workstations only, while the other partners receive the shared user interface via the network. JVTOS also allows audio-visual conversation among all subscribers, but it's more than a pure conferencing systems and offers new ways to collaborate.

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