QoS routing and performance in packet networks: A visual simulation platform and case study
Cynthia A. Funka-Lea, Carol L. Janczewski, Wing Cheong Lau, Ramesh Nagarajan, Yung-Terng Wang, Zhi-Lei Xin · Bell Labs Technical Journal · 2002
One of the critical components in providing quality of service (QoS) in packet networks is routing. As a consequence, significant efforts in the areas of open system specifications and active research are leading to new routing and signaling protocols for asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and Internet protocol (IP) networks. Such developments have created the need for a general-purpose platform to understand and evaluate the performance of these new protocols. In this paper, we describe the Routing Performance Simulator (RopeSIM), a visual simulator developed for studying routing performance issues in packet networks. RopeSIM is based on the visual discrete-event simulation platform Q+ developed by the Performance Analysis Department at Bell Labs. The Q+ platform provides basic event scheduling and handling, queuing, and simulation control, as well as the various visual input/output capabilities exploited in RopeSIM. In addition, RopeSIM includes algorithms developed for routing, signaling, link state updates, and resource reservation/allocations. Various statistics useful for QoS routing algorithm performance studies, such as call blocking, network revenue, selected call routes, and link-state update message loads are also available in RopeSIM. For purposes of concreteness, we present a case study of ATM private network-to-network interface (PNNI) routing performance using RopeSIM. By using RopeSIM to investigate a wide range of performance issues in the case study, we demonstrate its versatility as a general-purpose platform for studying routing in packet networks. Finally, we outline ongoing and future work.