A Proposal for End-to-End QoS Provisioning in Software-Defined Networks

Abstract

This paper describes a framework application for the control plane of a network infrastructure; the objective is to feature end-user applications with the capability of requesting at any time a customised end-to-end Quality-of-Service profile in the context of dynamic Service-Level-Agreements. Our solution targets current and future real-time applications that require tight QoS parameters, such as a guaranteed end-to-end delay bound. These applications include, but are not limited to, health-care, mobility, education, manufacturing, smart grids, gaming and much more. We discuss the issues related to the previous Integrated Service and the reason why the RSVP protocol for guaranteed QoS did not take off. Then we present a new signaling and resource reservation framework based on the cutting-edge network controller ONOS.  Moreover, the presented system foresees the need of considering the edges of the network, where terminal applications are connected to, to be piloted by distinct logically centralised controllers. We discuss a possible inter-domain communication mechanism to achieve the end-to-end QoS guarantee.