Router-based traffic-engineering in MPLS/DiffServ/HMIP radio access networks

The purpose of this research is to develop and 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). 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. We use a number of different mobility scenarios and a mix of different types of traffic to evaluate our architecture and algorithm. We use the network simulator ns2 to study this problem.