Simulating Router-based Traffic-engineering in Radio Access Networks using NS-2

D.A. Barlow, H.L. Owen, V. Vassiliou (USA), J. Grimminger, H.-P. Huth, and J. Sokol (Germany)

Keywords

Simulation, Traffic-engineering, Mobile IP, MPLS, Differentiated Services,

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to develop a simulation environment to evaluate a traffic-engineering architecture for Internet Protocol (IP) radio access networks (RAN) that use Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Differentiated Services (DiffServ) to support mobile hosts. We assume mobility support is provided by a protocol such as Hierarchical Mobile IP (HMIP). We use the network simulator ns-2 as the core of our simulation environment. Around this core we built a system of pre-simulation, during simulation, and post processing software that enabled us to simulate our traffic engineering architecture with only very minimal changes to the core ns-2 software. The traffic-engineering architecture is router based – meaning that routers on the edges of the network make the decisions about on to which paths to place admitted traffic. We propose a simple algorithm that supports the architecture and requires very little knowledge of network state in order to function. The goal of the architecture is to provide an efficient and fast method to reduce network congestion while increasing the Quality of Service (QoS) level, when compared to traditional routing and traffic-engineering techniques. Our simulation environment supports a number of different mobility scenarios and a mix of different types of traffic to evaluate our architecture and algorithm.

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