Policy Framework for MPLS Network
Renu Bhattar,
M.Tech,
03,
81 pp.
Department of
Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay,
Powai, Mumbai 400 076.
Supervisor(s):
Abhay Karandikar, G.Sivakumar
Real-Time traffic should maintain their timeliness else
they lose their value and effectiveness. Guaranteeing Quality of Service
(QoS) to such real-time applications with the current Internet is difficult
as the Internet does not support service differentiation. It delivers only
best-effort service. Providing a QoS requires the network to support admission
control and service differentiation. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
protocol is regarded as a technique for Traffic Engineering (TE) and QoS
in IP networks as it can establish paths similar to ATM virtual circuits.
Admission Control is based on administrative policies and resource availability.
Resource-based Admission Control is a common element of QoS which is to prevent
network overload by controlling the admitted traffic. Policy control is needed
for authentication, authorizing and accounting of the resources and services.
The Common Open Policy Service (COPS) protocol provides possibility of having
administrative decisions to be enforced along with resource admission control.
By extending the COPS protocol for MPLS environment, there is an opportunity
to provide service guarantees and also ``graceful degradation'' in unfavorable
conditions. This report proposes MPLS resource allocation model that relies
on COPS for policy and resource control. It addresses the need for having
a policy control mechanism in MPLS networks and then gives the framework
of the MPLS policy model. It defines the protocol objects along with the
operational details. {\bf Keywords:} COPS-MPLS, Constrained-based Routing,
Policy Management Model, Traffic Engineering Quality of Service, Admission
Control