Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra

NSIS and 802.1p/Q modules

The EuQoS project aims to research, integrate, test, validate and demonstrate end-to-end QoS technologies to support the infrastructure up-grade for advanced QoS-aware applications - voice, video-conferencing, video-streaming, educational, tele-engineering and medical applications - over multiple, heterogeneous research, scientific and industrial network domains.

As aforementioned, the EuQoS project targets to reach QoS in end-to-end heterogeneous networks, including Ethernet networks. In those contexts, simulations are done, as proof of concepts, in order to validate QoS technologies and to server as a basis for prototyping.

Regarding simulation, it is being used the Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) by introducing flexibility on new modules addition. In spite of NS-2 offering support to the Ethernet networks simulation, there were no modules that implemented QoS Ethernet. So, were developed in the EuQoS project, at Department of Informatics Engineering of University of Coimbra, by CISUC research team, two new modules in comply with the IEEE 802.1p and IEEE 802.1Q specifications which allow the simulation of NSIS-based QoS provision over Ethernet networks, in NS-2, they are listed right below:

• EthPrioQueue: the strict priority scheduler according to IEEE 802.1D specification; and
• Agent/UDP/PrioAgent: responsible for including the Ethernet overhead on the packets and for limiting their MTU according to the Ethernet specification.

Click here to get the modules code and here to download some documentation about what was developed. Into the nsis.tar.gz, obtained through the first link, there are some examples of the modules use, a "readme" file with the installation instructions and, obviously, the own code. The modules were developed to the version 2.28 of NS-2 and tested on the top of the Linux operating system. In the second link you may found an brief explanation about the two modules descripted above.

Publications

• Carmo, M. and Carvalho, B. and Silva, J. S. and Monteiro, E. and Simões, P. and Curado, M. and Boavida, F. , "NSIS-based Quality of Service and Resource Allocation in Ethernet Networks", in Proc. of the 4th International Conference on Wired/Wireless Internet Communications, 4th International Conference on Wired/Wireless Internet Communications, Bern, May 2006. [ pdf ]

• Carmo, M. and Silva, J. S. and Monteiro, E. and Simões, P. and Curado, M. and Boavida, F. , "Avaliação da QoS em redes Ethernet", in Proc. of the CRC’2005 – 8ª Conferência sobre Redes de Computadores, pp. 1-10, CRC’2005 – 8ª Conferência sobre Redes de Computadores, Portalegre, September 2005. [ pdf ]

• Carmo, M. and Silva, J. S. and Monteiro, E. and Simões, P. and Boavida, F. , "Ethernet QoS Modeling in Emerging Scenarios", 3rd International Workshop on Internet Performance, Simulation, Monitoring and Measurements (IPS-MoMe 2005), Warsow, Poland, January 2005. [ pdf ]