Abstract

As fixed and wireless access networks converge to­wards Internet Protocol based transport in next generation net­works, the requirement for effective and scalable control and management solutions to address the complexity introduced by their heterogeneity becomes ever more critical. Over the years, policy-based management has emerged as a viable tool to address this challenge. Within the IV-ATC project, we are developing a policy-based framework, (Converged Networks QoS Framework, CNQF) for end-to-end QoS control and resource management in converged next generation networks. CNQF is designed to sup­port QoS control and context-driven resource management poli­cies across all networks (access, metro, core) on the end-to-end transport layer of converged networks. This paper describes CNQF and develops an exemplary use case scenario for policy­based resource management based on our CNQF architecture. The paper also presents the development of stochastic-analytic models to characterise and evaluate the impact of policies on op­erational performance. The model is used to analyse the perfor­mance of dynamic CNQF context-driven policies for admission control case study.