Prioritised best effort routing with four quality of service metrics applying the concept of the analytic hierarchy process

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Abstract

In this paper, a new approach that applies the concept of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in the area of routing in communication networks is proposed. AHP is a well-known model in the area of decision making with multiple objectives. In addition, a new algorithm called Enhanced Best Effort Quality of Service Routing (QoS) with Multiple Prioritised Metrics is proposed for connection-oriented point-to-point communications. Four QoS metrics have been considered: delay, bandwidth, security and loss probability. The results presented and discussed in this paper are focussed on demonstrating the effects of metric prioritisation on the routing decisions. It is found that changing priority of a metric from 0 (the lowest priority) to 1 (the highest priority) applying the proposed algorithm improves the value of that metric by an average of (20–60)% for 90% of utilisation range.

Introduction

Recent advances in high speed networking technology have created opportunities for the development of multimedia applications that are characterised by multiple quality of service (QoS) requirements. One of the key issues in supporting QoS traffic is QoS routing.

There are two types of routing: constrained and best effort. The proposed algorithm is for best effort but with some enhancements that help to deal with multiple metrics.

The Internet provides a best effort service to applications and thus cannot guarantee to meet the QoS requirements of multimedia communications. However, research and development efforts have been made towards providing QoS guarantees in the Internet. In [1], a new bandwidth allocation mechanism (BAM) is proposed. It uses less bandwidth than the peak rate BAM, while providing the same service. In [2], the use of QoS routing to enhance the support of IP Telephony is proposed. The proposed scheme is based on QoS intradomain OSPF routing, an extension of the conventional OSPF. Refs. [3], [4] present a good overview of QoS in the Internet. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has proposed many service models, mechanisms and frameworks to meet the demand for QoS. Among them are Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) [5], Integrated Services (IntServ) [6], Differentiated Services (DiffServ) [7], Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) [8] and A Framework for QoS-based Routing in the Internet [9].

Although we generally state that QoS should be guaranteed, in practice the user should be able to specify the degree (or level) of guarantees. In general, there are three levels of guarantee [4], [10]: Hard or deterministic guarantee, Soft or statistical guarantee and Best effort. In some cases, one connection may use different levels of guarantee for different QoS parameters.

Various approaches have been considered to deal with QoS characterisation. Namely, by using a single metric, a single compound metric or multiple metrics [11], [12], [13].

The main objectives of this paper are: firstly, to propose a new approach that applies the concept of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) [14], [15] in the area of routing in communication networks. Secondly, we propose an algorithm that supports metric prioritisation in best effort QoS routing. Thirdly, more detailed results are discussed and analysed to demonstrate effects of metric prioritisation on the performance of the proposed algorithm.

Section snippets

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP)

The AHP, a multi-criteria technique developed by Saaty [14], [15], is a robust and flexible multi-criteria decision analysis methodology. Although most applications of AHP are in the area of socio-economic planning, there have been some applications in decisions related to road networks [16], petroleum pipeline networks [17], Health service [18], project management [19] and telecommunications [12], [20], [21], [22], [23].

In general, there are four basic steps in using AHP [21], [22]:

  • 1.

    The

Simulation and experimental design

In this section, simulation results are discussed and analysed. it is worth mentioning that some modifications and assumptions are added compared to what have been discussed in Section 2; security metric is considered as a range [0,1] rather than binary (0 or 1) and it is found that it would better to concentrate on vulnerability rather than security. More details are provided in Section 3.2.3.

Performance evaluations and results analysis

In this section, performance of the proposed algorithm, EBQRMPM, when changing metrics priorities will be evaluated.

The priority sets are organised as shown in Table 10. Since there are four metrics and weights of priorities can be given any value on the range [0,1], it is expected to have large number of iterations and large number of possibilities to show results in curves. Therefore, we decided to select curves that show the best (priority=1), worst (priority=0), cases-A&D: sets-1, 8, 9 and

Limitations of EBQRMPM

Despite the overall promising performance of the proposed algorithm (EBQRMPM) in best effort QoS routing with multiple and prioritised metrics, it has been found that there is a complexity drawback. After investigation, it is found that its complexity is caused by: firstly, the step of finding all possible paths (P) between src and ter. Secondly, the steps of constructing the ppcm(P,P), nppcm(P,P) and anppcm(m,P) matrices.

However, since this proposal of applying AHP at QoS routing is new and it

Conclusions and future work

In this paper, firstly, a new approach that applies the concept of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in the area of routing in communication networks has been proposed. AHP is a well-known model in the area of decision making with multiple objectives. Secondly, a new algorithm called Enhanced Best Effort Quality of Service Routing (QoS) with Multiple Prioritised Metrics (EBQRMPM) has also been proposed. It is proposed for connection-oriented point-to-point communications. Four metrics have

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