White Paper

ACCEDIAN Establishing Real-Time Hierarchical

NETWORKS QoS with Zero-Latency Traffic Shaping
PACKET PERFORMANCE ASSURANCE TM

Establishing Real-Time Hierarchical QoS with Zero-Latency Traffic Shaping

The Need for QoS Management

In an unconditioned Ethernet or IP/MPLS connection all
packets are treated equally: when there is an excess of traffic
it is “tail dropped” by a switch or access platform, an effect
especially disruptive to TCP traffic, while also causing
dropouts in VoIP and video streams.
Increasingly this “dumb-pipe” approach is impacting
businesses and cellular operators who are migrating towards
packet-based connectivity and applications. Consider the
diverse demands of three common classes of applications
sharing an access link – VoIP, IP-video and Internet browsing
– VoIP is a relatively low bandwidth application that is highly
sensitive to both delay and jitter; video is less sensitive to
delay but is highly sensitive to jitter with high bandwidth
demands; general Internet browsing is often bursty and may
require large amounts of bandwidth, but is not often
considered QoS-sensitive. Giving each of these applications
equal access to limited bandwidth will impact the QoS of both
the voice and video applications, in the worst case resulting in
periodic service disruption as Internet usage varies over time.
For providers offering Service Level Agreements outlining
QoS requirements, a best-effort access connection is not only
sub-optimal, it is also expensive: SLA penalties can quickly
wash out the extra revenue SLA-based services afford, and
customer churn rates will reflect poor service QoS and
availability.
Over-provisioning bandwidth is a possible solution, but offers
inconsistent results with the additional cost of consuming core
resources and bandwidth. This technique often results in
packets being dropped in the core of the network, where
retransmission and network overhead impact large amounts of
traffic. In general, if a packet is dropped before it reaches its
destination, all of the resources it has consumed in transit are
wasted.
QoS Management at the Service Demarcation Point
To effectively enable carrier-grade services over packet-based
infrastructures, service providers need to implement a QoS
management (traffic conditioning) scheme that ensures that
critical, real-time applications are allocated proper priority from
end-to-end. As all network resources are impacted by poor
traffic management, it is ideal to apply traffic conditioning
techniques at the service edge, effectively reducing congestion
before it can enter the provider’s network.
One natural way to achieve this to apply QoS management at
each service demarcation point, often defined by a Network
Interface Device (NID) located at customer premises, cell sites
and hand-off points between interconnecting networks. By
conditioning traffic at these network boundaries, service
providers assume control over traffic entering and leaving the
network, enabling the best possible QoS and assuring
revenue-driving SLAs.

Hub

MSC
Cell
Wireless
Site Core /
Backhaul
Transport
Network CO
Customer
Metro /
LAN
Access Aggregation Hand-Off Partner
Customer Node Point Carrier
LAN

Typical NID Demarcation / H-QoS Application Points:

© 2008 Accedian Networks, Inc. ACCEDIAN.com

 White Paper
ACCEDIAN Establishing Real-Time Hierarchical
NETWORKS QoS with Zero-Latency Traffic Shaping
PACKET PERFORMANCE ASSURANCE TM

QoS Management Techniques Hierarchical QoS and Traffic Shaping

A common, simple form of QoS management is bandwidth
policing, also known as rate limiting. Affectionately referred to
by operations staff as “crushing the edge”, bandwidth policing
simply drops any excess packets that exceed the policy
defined for a particular flow. A typical bandwidth policy
reflecting the coexistence of VoIP, IP-video and Internet traffic
over a 10 Mbps connection is shown in the table below:
Hierarchical QoS (H-QoS) schemes are designed to provide
highly efficient use of access and network bandwidth by
implementing traffic shaping techniques in addition to simple
rate limiting. Unlike bandwidth policing that simply drops
excess traffic, shaping is designed expressly to avoid packet
loss by selectively buffering traffic, effectively smoothing out
bursty traffic to “right-size” it to the bandwidth available.

When used for H-QoS, shaping schemes rely on a hierarchy

of application priorities, which determine the degree of
buffering or policing applied to a particular traffic flow. Also
know as application acceleration, shaping can ensure that
the most QoS sensitive traffic always receives the bandwidth
required by “stealing” it from lower-priority flows. Benefits of
H-QoS to service providers include more efficient use of
network resources, the ability to adapt their network to reflect
the needs of their customers, fewer QoS issues, and a
Triple-Play Bandwidth Policy Example
greater capacity for over-provisioning.
This simple scheme ensures that VoIP and video maintain a
certain level of QoS for most practical scenarios, while Internet
traffic only consumes bandwidth not required by these QoS- Policer
sensitive applications. It should be noted that video is given a
Link Speed
small amount of EIR to accommodate a sudden increase in
Customer Provider
video traffic (e.g. when streaming starts) to improve channel LAN Network
change and service response time. However, there are
shortcomings to simple bandwidth regulation. If the demand for
Packet Loss -
a service increases, or the profile doesn’t accurately reflect affects all flows
service requirements, QoS will suffer. For example, if VoIP
traffic exceeds the policies set for it (due to more calls than Bandwidth Policing
expected, or new phones added without updating the policy),
Shaper
packets will simply be dropped, resulting in immediate call
quality issues. Link Speed
Customer Provider
LAN Network
Conversely, this policy does not allow Internet traffic to use
more bandwidth, even if VoIP and video data is not present.
In addition, this scenario requires that the aggregate bandwidth Limited, Prioritized Priority
Packet Loss
required for the worst-case scenario is always available – an Other
expensive form of QoS assurance, as applications are often
Traffic Shaping
bursty in nature, leaving a link underutilized (and overpriced) a
good part of the time.

© 2008 Accedian Networks, Inc. ACCEDIAN.com

 White Paper
ACCEDIAN Establishing Real-Time Hierarchical
NETWORKS QoS with Zero-Latency Traffic Shaping
PACKET PERFORMANCE ASSURANCE TM

Traffic Shaping Limitations

Key Causes of Shaping Delay
As useful as shaping sounds in theory, service providers have
been justifiably reluctant to apply this technique to critical
 Packet Characterization Delay
traffic, as most shaping methods add significant delay to QoS-
sensitive traffic. In most shaping implementations two key  Store-and-forward, network processor based
software algorithms cannot process packets
aspects cause this unwanted delay:
without some inspection delay

(1) all shaped traffic (including real-time traffic) is queued in a
store-and-forward buffer for packet characterization and
processing, and;
 Silicon-based, hardware packet processing
architectures characterize packets at wire speed,
eliminating characterization delay.

(2) common shaping algorithms, such as the IETF-specified
Random Early Detection (RED) method, rely only (and
directly) on queue length to estimate traffic congestion.
Compounding the problem, these two key factors are
interrelated: the RED algorithm requires the use of large
buffers to work effectively with bursty traffic, increasing the
duration packets are delayed in priority queues 1.
 Shaping Algorithm Efficiency
 Standard algorithms, including RED, require large
buffers to adapt properly to bursty traffic, directly
affecting queuing latency.
 The more efficient BLUE algorithm estimates
congestion using adaptive techniques that consider
both queue usage and link idle time, greatly
reducing buffer size, delay and packet loss.

Zero-Latency & Delay-Optimized Shaping Techniques

To shape traffic, packets first must be inspected and
characterized (the first source of delay), then priority queued
Customer Zero-Latency
for transmission (an additional delay dependent on buffer LAN Fast-Thru™
size). With these constraints, it is commonly assumed that
traffic shaping always introduces delay (and to a lesser
degree, jitter) to real-time applications, necessarily imparting Custom
an impact on QoS.
Silicon
(FPGA / ASIC)

Recent advances in packet-processing techniques and more

efficient shaping algorithms have been able significantly
Provider Priority
reduce these effects, overcoming the limitations of traditional Real Time Network Other
shaping methods and allowing this technology to become a “On the Wire”
key part of H-QoS schemes for even the most delay-sensitive Packet
applications. The best possible shaping implementations Processing
today add inconsequential amounts of delay and jitter to high-
priority traffic, while reducing the latency (and the size of Silicon-Based Packet Processing
buffers) required to queue less critical flows. & Zero-Latency Shaping

1 Feng, Kandlur, et al. Blue: A New Class of Active Queue Management Algorithms, 2000

© 2008 Accedian Networks, Inc. ACCEDIAN.com

 White Paper
ACCEDIAN Establishing Real-Time Hierarchical
NETWORKS QoS with Zero-Latency Traffic Shaping
PACKET PERFORMANCE ASSURANCE TM

Packet inspection delays can be virtually eliminated by silicon-
based packet processing architectures that, unlike network
processor-based designs, do not require store-and-forward
buffering to characterize packets. Dedicated, silicon-based
processing is performed at full wire-speed, introducing < 5 μs
of delay, up to 100 times faster than alternative designs and
1,000 times faster than the 3-5 ms end-to-end, one-way delay
limit often specified in real-time application SLAs. Since
hardware-based processing is done “on the wire”, the highest-
priority flows can continue in transit without any buffering or
shaping delays. This “fast-through” technique is also known
as a real-time queue, akin to a dedicated carpool or bypass
lane on a highway, effectively resulting in zero-latency shaping
impact for the most sensitive traffic.
Even with the availability of a real-time queue, lower-priority
traffic still needs to be buffered and processed to shape the
remaining traffic. To reduce queue-related delays, a new
shaping algorithm known as BLUE has been developed that
offers significant performance improvements over the
commonly implemented RED algorithm 1.
Instead of relying directly on queue length as an indicator of
congestion, BLUE uses an adaptive algorithm that considers
both queue usage and link idle events to manage traffic
queues, resulting in both significantly lower packet loss as well
as smaller buffer-size requirements. Smaller buffers result
directly in reduced shaping latency, while less packet loss
decreases the utilization of network resources. This overall
improvement in shaping performance is due to the BLUE
algorithm’s proven ability to effectively adapt to sudden
changes in bandwidth demand.
Implementing Zero-Latency Traffic Shaping & H-QoS
at the Service Demarc
With these new advances in traffic shaping technology, service
providers can now implement high-performance H-QoS for
even the most demanding applications. By using network
interface devices (NIDs) to perform these traffic conditioning
functions at the demarcation point, providers can most
effectively take control their services from edge-to-edge, even
over multi-vendor, multi-carrier and multi-technology
converged networks, without reconfiguring, upgrading or
replacing existing access platforms.

MetroNID™ Demarc Units with Traffic Shaping

Accedian Networks’ MetroNID™ packet assurance

demarcation units combine silicon-based packet processing,
the BLUE shaping algorithm and high-performance bandwidth
policing in a compact, cost-efficient unit, allowing service
providers to effectively apply H-QoS at customer locations, cell
sites, and hand-off points throughout their network.
METER

Demarc & In-Service Assure

As the devices also provide a wide range of service creation Loopback RFC-2544 SLAs
and service assurance capabilities, providers using MetroNID
units can quickly establish and assure large-scale SLA-based
Ethernet & IP services over any network topology, while
optimizing real-time application performance. Test Set EVC Shaping,
Support Creation Policing

1 Feng, Kandlur, et al. Blue: A New Class of Active Queue Management Algorithms, 2000

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© 2008 Accedian Networks, Inc.
Version: June 08

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