This paper proposes implementing guaranteed frame rate (GFR) service using the available bit rate (ABR) control mechanism in large-scale networks. GFR is being standardized as a new ATM service category to provide a minimum cell rate (MCR) guarantee to each virtual channel (VC) at the frame level. Although ABR also can support MCR, a source must adjust its cell emission rate according to the network congestion indication. In contrast, GFR service is intended for users who are not equipped to comply with the source behavior rules required by ABR. It is expected that many existing users will fall into this category. As one implementation of GFR, weighted round robin (WRR) with per-VC queueing at each switch is well known. However, WRR is hard to implement in a switch supporting a large number of VCs because it needs to determine in one cell time which VC queue should be served. In addition, it may result in ineffective bandwidth utilization at the network level because its control mechanism is closed at the node level. On the other hand, progress in ABR service standardization has led to the development of some ABR control algorithms that can handle a large number of connections. Thus, we propose implementing GFR using an already developed ABR control mechanism that can cope with many connections. It consists of an explicit rate (ER) control mechanism and a virtual source/virtual destination (VS/VD) mechanism. Allocating VSs/VDs to edge switches and ER control to backbone switches enables us to apply ABR control up to the entrance of a network, which results in effective bandwidth utilization at the network level. Our method also makes it possible to share resources between GFR and ABR connections, which decreases the link cost. Through simulation analysis, we show that our method can work better than WRR under various traffic conditions.

This paper proposes a novel packet classification method using ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM), which can store very wide policy rules despite the limited width of TCAM. For IP version 6, policy rules could be 304 bits wide. This method enables us to use commercially available TCAM for packet classification and thus builds an ultra high-speed policy based packet forwarding engine for differentiated services on the Internet.

Service chaining (SC) is a method for realizing a service by transferring flows among several service functions (SFs) that process packets. A route among SFs is called a service path (SP). Service chaining is being developed to reduce costs, increase flexibility, and shorten time-to-market. SC technologies are expected to be applied to carrier networks so that large communication carriers benefit from them. We assume that SPs process the traffic of services that treat all users in the same way such as an Internet access service for home users. An SP processes flows from several users. We do not assume that each SP is assigned to a user. Because a carrier network accommodates many users, each service will be heavily utilized. Therefore, it is assumed that the amount of traffic of a service is larger than the resource of an SF apparatus. Several SPs are required to process the traffic. SPs are supposed to meet two requirements. One is guaranteeing minimum bandwidth. The other is reducing the number of SF apparatuses, i.e., high resource utilization. Resource utilization depends on the combination of the resource quantities of SF apparatuses. Network operators have to determine the bandwidth of each SP within the range from the minimum bandwidth to the resource quantities of SF apparatuses to maximize resource utilization. Methods for determining the bandwidth of each SP have not been proposed for meeting the two requirements. Therefore, we propose a resource allocation method for this purpose. The proposed method determines the bandwidth of each SP on the basis of the combination of the resource quantities of SF apparatuses for guaranteeing the minimum bandwidth and maximizing resource utilization and allocates necessary resources to each SP. We also evaluate the proposed method and confirm that it can guarantee the minimum bandwidth of SPs and achieve high resource utilization regardless of the combination of the resource quantities of SF apparatuses. Although SF apparatuses are generally produced without considering the combinations of resource quantities of SF apparatuses in SPs, the proposed method can provide more options for selecting SF apparatuses.