Towards multi-service residential access networking
With services becoming extremely sophisticated and multimedia-based, current access networks' infrastructures are getting potentially obsolete as they cannot be completely overhauled at these rates without cost. Moreover, end-users need inexpensive and simple access to networks with acceptable performance, while home networks are expected to effectively manage user profiles and provide reliable and quality services by fast response. Taking into account these requirements and expectations, the TORRENT project exploits the potentialities of existing networks, being either connection oriented or connectionless and offers a solution. Thereby, a new test-bed for multi-service residential access networks allows home users to transparently choose the most suitable transport network and physical access interfaces. Their options highly depend on QoS expectations for particular ranges and combinations of services. Within this context, researchers designed and developed databases for user service preferences and accounting for on-line use by an agent system. For the current schema of user preferences database, which is still under development, routing decisions are fixed. With exclusive combinations "rd+ip+port+mode" for each table entry, it is expected that future schemas will be based on a more flexible context-dependent choice. The offered user preferences range along with their degree of customisability are specified by a market analysis of the planned customer-base. Utility functions offer a simple interface that displays the increased potentialities of the Service Resource Management (SRM) software in traffic management. These include admission control, bandwidth tradeoffs with and without congestion, per-microflow and per-service-role rate limiting. Additionally, best-available choice from a range of options and response of a selection process to changes in tariff structure and QoS are also involved. The accounting database is grounded on holding Call Detail Records (CDRs) for individual test cases. Running on a Linux platform, the multi-user, fully functional, open-source, relational database features triggers, which are embedded functions to assist in consistency enforcement, such as referential integrity in the database. For further details click at: http://www.torrent-innovations.org(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)