Introducing Network QoS

Quality management in different technologies

Introduction

The platform designs a solution so that each network slice meets the quality requirements of the application that will use it.

Network slices are designed, provisioned and monitored based on an intent provided by a DevOps engineer, the resources available and the connectivity between the required endpoints.

Network slices are monitored to verify that the intent has been satisfied and that the network quality of service is adequate.

Technology

Different technology domains have different QoS models and implementations. One of the core values of the Zeetta platform is the ability to abstract vendor-specific QoS implementations from the underlying networking technologies. The following sections discuss each technology type in more detail.

Ethernet-IP

In this domain the resources are the VLAN Id pools, the IP Address pool, the DSCP/VLAN PCP value used per slice and the QoS characteristics associated with the network slice:

  • Throughput
  • Delay budget
  • Jitter budget
  • Priority

Zeetta uses different mechanisms to achieve these QoS characteristics across the path for the slice – classification, marking, policing, queuing and shaping.

WAN

The resources and quality of the WAN domain are defined by the WAN service provider. QoS and endpoints are specified when the service is acquired and then one or more network slices are created consuming these resources. The Service Provider for the SD-WAN platform configures the connectivity across the path and achieves the specified QoS using underlying technologies like MPLS, WDM lambdas and VPNs.

Zeetta can allocate these resources across multiple network slices based on application requirements and slice intent.

WiFi

Traditionally WiFi has used an equal priority access approach to enable device and application access to services.

In an effort to seek fundamental improvement 802.11, known as IEEE 802.11ax, has been approved to deliver the next-generation wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies. In WLANs, the medium access control protocol is the key component that enables efficient sharing of the common radio channel while satisfying the quality of service (QoS) requirements for multimedia applications.

These latest changes need incorporating into the Zeetta platform as supporting devices become more common.

5G MPN

The 5G Core is able to configure a specific QoS per service, this is achieved by configuring the 5QI parameter which is associated with a particular service to configure characteristics such as:

  • Priority

  • Packet Delay Budget

  • Packet Error Rate

The Zeetta platform uses the 5QI setting to achieve QoS in the 5G MPN and configure the 5GC functions such as the User Plane Function (UPF.)

Cloud

The cloud ecosystem works similarly to the WAN domain. The cloud provider doesn’t directly expose network resources.

The application compute resources are not managed by the Zeetta platform but Zeetta can hook into application monitoring to score application experience.

The Zeetta product is agnostic with respect to the cloud provider.

MEC

The MEC domain is limited regarding the network QoS that it offers.

MECs are primarily concerned with compute-based application QoS. The prevalent MEC technology is Kubernetes.

 Kubernetes

In the case of Kubernetes, there are 3 types of Quality of Service defined which are associated with the behaviour of the Pod/Node/Cluster but these are not associated with the network stack:

  • Guaranteed

  • Burstable

  • BestEffort

On the network side, Kubernetes network capabilities depend on which network plugin is used. In Kubernetes, it is possible to configure Network Policies which control traffic flow at the IP address or port level but it is not possible to apply any kind of rate limit or priority.