By Yonghao (Leo) Wang, Cham Athwal
07 Aug 2012
The
majority of traffic on the current Internet is in the form of real-time audio/video
rather than non-time dependent data. The original internet was not designed to
carry such time series data, nor interactive applications or other real-time
business critical data.
It
is difficult to achieve a networking architecture, which supports both time
critical audio data and also best effort data. Converged networks based on IP,
scalable from LAN to WAN are required to support the vast (and growing)
interactive audio/video media traffic on the Internet. However connectionless
packet architectures are inevitably a problem for deterministic data especially
when low latency is required. Current QoS, traffic engineering and
over-provisioning solutions cannot solve the entire problem; instead they
complicate the system and increase power requirements and cost.
We
propose a new unified low latency network architecture that supports both time
deterministic and best effort traffic towards full bandwidth utilisation with
high performance routing/switching. For time critical application such as live
audio/video, this network architecture allows low latency as well as the
flexibility to support multiplexing of multiple channels with different
sampling rates and data unit lengths.
The
research project is based on a collaboration on “Future Network” and its
potential applications with John Grant of NineTiles Networks who is a leading
editor of ISO/IEC standard drafts on related areas. The “Future Network”
project is based on a clean-slate design of future Internet infrastructure in
order to overcome some inevitable systematic problems of the current Internet architecture.
Currently
the novel Layer-2 architecture Flexilink is proposed. The initial work will be
presented in 133rd AES convention [1]. The ultimate aim of
this layer-2 redesign is:
· Fully manageable and measurable QoS for time critical data such as Audio/Video streaming, interactive media.
The
design rationale and concept are based on a simplified taxonomy of Internet
traffic and the redesign of layer 2 architecture, the details of which can be found
in[1]. In this initial
work the implementation of Flexilink on Gigabit Ethernet is discussed and
proposed. However, there are many unsolved areas and problems such as the
design of Flexilink over different layer 1 network medium especially wireless
and mobile network, and the interconnection of Flexilink with existing network architectures.
An academically rigorous theoretical model needs to be established to quantify and evaluate the quality of the new architecture. It is necessary to model the new architecture “Flexilink” using network simulation tools. And it is interesting to see how Flexilink works over other existing network technology. The following topics need to be further investigated as potential research projects:
· Simulation of Flexilink on OPNET, NS2 or NS3.
· Flexilink over different layer1-2 technology PON, DSL, Wireless.
· IP and Flexilink, Routing, multicasting and unicasting, MPLS and Integrated service.
· Router Switch design (FPGA + Network Flow processing language)
It is also foreseeable to have some application oriented projects to align with the major subject area of the School of Digital Media Technology such as:
· Studio networking (Audio/Video over Flexilink).
· Low latency remote haptic over network.
· Synchronized Cloud collaboration.
· CDN Video networking delivery.
Reference