NGN and WiMAX: Putting the Pieces Together

Authors: Mohamed K. Watfa, Khaled Abdel Naby, Chetan Govind Bhatia

Abstract:

With the exponential rise in the number of multimedia applications available, the best-effort service provided by the Internet today is insufficient. Researchers have been working on new architectures like the Next Generation Network (NGN) which, by definition, will ensure Quality of Service (QoS) in an all-IP based network [1]. For this approach to become a reality, reservation of bandwidth is required per application per user. WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a wireless communication technology which has predefined levels of QoS which can be provided to the user [4]. IPv6 has been created as the successor for IPv4 and resolves issues like the availability of IP addresses and QoS. This paper provides a design to use the power of WiMAX as an NSP (Network Service Provider) for NGN using IPv6. The use of the Traffic Class (TC) field and the Flow Label (FL) field of IPv6 has been explained for making QoS requests and grants [6], [7]. Using these fields, the processing time is reduced and routing is simplified. Also, we define the functioning of the ASN gateway and the NGN gateway (NGNG) which are edge node interfaces in the NGNWiMAX design. These gateways ensure QoS management through built in functions and by certain physical resources and networking capabilities.

Keywords: WiMAX, NGN, QoS, IPv6, Flow Label, ASNGateway

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1084384

References:

[1] ITU-T, "General Overview of NGN", ITU-T Recommendation Y.2001, 2004.
[2] A. Modarressi, S. Mohan, "Control and Management in Next-Generation Networks: Challenges and Opportunities", IEEE Communications Magazine, 2000, pp. 94-102.
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[5] S. Deering, R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, version 6", IETF Network Working Group RFC 2460, 1998.
[6] K. Nichols, S. Blake, F. Baker, D. Black "Definition of the Differentiated Services Field in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", IETF Network Working Group RFC 2474, 1998.
[7] J. Rajahalme, A. Conta, B. Carpenter, S. Deering, "IPv6 Flow Label Specification", IETF Network Working Group RFC 3697, 2004, pp.2-6.
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