RFC 3387 (rfc3387) - Page 3 of 19
Considerations from the Service Management Research Group (SMRG) on Quality of Service (QoS) in the IP Network
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 3387 IP Service Management in the QoS Network September 2002 today. The IP community must be very concerned that the equality that characterized the best effort Internet may be sacrificed in favor of a service that has a completely different business model. If the core network started to provide services that generated more revenue, it could easily come at the expense of the less revenue generating best effort service. 3. IP Management Standardization Management standardization efforts in the IP community have traditionally been concerned with what is commonly referred to as "element management" or "device management". Recently, new efforts in IP management have added the ability to address service issues and to look at the network in more abstract terms. These efforts which included a logical representation of services as well as the representation of resources in the network, combined with the notion of a user of a service, has made possible the much talked about concept of 'policy'. Notable among these efforts are the Policy work in the IETF and the DMTF work on CIM and DEN. Crucial elements of the service management framework are coming into perspective, but point to a trend in IP that is a quite radical departure from the control mechanisms of the past. As the service model evolves from being what was sufficient to support best effort to being able to support variable levels of service, a trend towards a centralized management architecture has become quite apparent. This is becoming increasingly apparent for two reasons. QoS mechanisms need network wide information [4], and for them to succeed, they must not require a tremendous amount of support from the core network. It is becoming increasingly accepted that only at the edge of the network will there be sufficient resources to provide the mechanisms necessary to admit and control various QoS flows. A question often asked these days is if "the architectural benefits of providing services in the middle of the network outweigh the architectural costs"[5]. This same question should be asked of service management. As new network elements are needed to support service management, even if they are not contributing directly to the forwarding of packets, the cost both in the increased complexity and the possibility of destabilizing the networks needs to be considered. An analyses of this issue will be made by the SMRG when we start to look more in detail at some of the issues raised in this survey document. Eder, et. al. Informational
