One of the fastest growing segments of Internet applications are real-time mul- timedia applications, like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Real-time multimedia applications use the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as the transport protocol because of the inherent conservative nature of the congestion avoidance schemes of Transmis- sion Control Protocol (TCP). The e®ects of uncontrolled °ows on the Internet have not yet been felt because UDP tra±c frequently constitutes only » 20% of the total Internet tra±c. It is pertinent that real-time multimedia applications become better citizens of the Internet, while at the same time deliver acceptable Quality of Service (QoS). Traditionally, packet losses and the increase in the end-to-end delay experienced by some of the packets characterizes congestion in the network. These two signals have been used to develop most known °ow control schemes. The current research considers the °ow accumulation in the network as the signal for use in °ow control. The most signi¯cant contribution of the current research is to propose novel end- to-end °ow control schemes for unicast real-time multimedia °ows transmitting over best-e®ort networks. These control schemes are based on predictive control of the accumulation signal. The end-to-end control schemes available in the literature are based on reactive control that do not take into account the feedback delay existing between the sender and the receiver nor the forward delay in the °ow dynamics. The performance of the proposed control schemes has been evaluated using the ns-2 simulation environment. The research concludes that active control of hard real- time °ows delivers the same or somewhat better QoS as High Bit Rate (HBR, no control), but with a lower average bit rate. Consequently, it helps reduce bandwidth use of controlled real-time °ows by anywhere between 31:43% to 43:96%. Proposed reactive control schemes deliver good QoS. However, they do not scale up as well as the predictive control schemes. Proposed predictive control schemes are e®ective in delivering good quality QoS while using up less bandwidth than even the reactive con- trol schemes. They scale up well as more real-time multimedia °ows start employing them.

The bluetooth technology encompasses a simple low-cost, low-power, global radio system for integration into mobile devices to solve a simple problem: replace the cables used on mobile devices with radio frequency waves. Such devices can form a quick ad-hoc secure "piconet" and communicate among the connected devices. While WLANs had good ad-hoc networking capabilities, there was no clear market standard among them. Moreover, there were no global standards that can be integrated and implemented into small handheld devices. Some market analysts predict that there will be some 1.4 billion Bluetooth devices in operation by the year 2005 [1]. That is the reason we replace the cable from the "Network Adapter" with a low-cost RF link that we now call Bluetooth. However, the current specification1.1 [2][3] does not describe the algorithms or mechanisms to create a scatternet due to a variety of unsolved issues. Since the upper layers are not defined in Bluetooth, it is not possible to implement scatternet in current specification. Hence in this research, we need make some modifications to Bluetooth protocol in order to support the transmissions of packets in scatternet. In this paper we describe a novel scatternet architecture, and present link performance results of the proposed architecture.

Nous examinons la possibilité de déployer un service Lower-than-Best-Effort(LBE)sur des liens à long délai tels que des liens satellites. L'objectif estde fournir une deuxième classe de priorité dédiée à un trafic en tâche defond ou un trafic de signalisation. Dans le contexte des liens à long délai, unservice LBE peut aider à optimiser l'utilisation de la capacité du lien. Enoutre, un service de LBE peut permettre un accès à Internet à faible coût oumême gratuit dans les collectivités éloignées via la communication parsatellite. Il existe deux niveaux de déploiement possible d'une approche de LBE: soit àla couche MAC ou soità la couche de transport. Dans cette thèse, nous nousintéressons à une approche de bout-en-bout et donc nous nousconcentrons spécifiquement sur les solutions de la couche transport. Nousproposons tout d'abord d'étudier LEDBAT (Low Extra Delay BackgroundTransport)en raison de son potentiel. En effet, LEDBAT a été normalisé parl'IETF et est largement déployé dans le client BitTorrent officiel.Malheureusement, le réglage des paramètres de LEDBAT dépend fortement desconditions du réseau. Dans le pire des cas, les flux LEDBAT peuvent prendretoute la bande passante d'autre trafic tels que le trafic commercial sur lelien satellite. LEDBAT souffre également d'un problème intra-inéquité, appelélatecomer advantage. Toutes ces raisons empêchent souvent les opérateursde permettre l'utilisation de ce protocole sur le lien sans fil et à longdélai puisqu'une mauvaise configuration peut surcharger la capacité du lien.Pour répondre à l'ensemble de ces problèmes, nous proposons FLOWER, un nouveauprotocole de transport, qui se positionne comme alternative à LEDBAT. Enutilisant un contrôleur de logique floue pour réguler le débit des données,FLOWER vise à résoudre les problèmes de LEDBAT tout en remplissant le rôle d'unprotocole de LBE. Dans cette thèse, nous montrons que FLOWER peut transporter letrafic deLBE non seulement dans le contexte à long délai, mais dansplusieurs conditions du réseau où LEDBAT se trouve en échec. / In this thesis, we look at the possibility to deploy a Lower-than-Best-Effort(LBE) service over long delay links such as satellite links. The objective isto provide a second priority class dedicated to background or signalingtraffic. In the context of long delay links, an LBE service might also help tooptimize the use of the link capacity. In addition, an LBE service can enablea low-cost or even free Internet access in remote communities via satellitecommunication. There exists two possible deployment level of an LBE approach: either at MAClayer or at transport layer. In this thesis, we are interested in anend-to-end approach and thusspecifically focus on the transport layersolutions. We first propose to study LEDBAT (Low Extra Delay BackgroundTransport) because of its potential. Indeed, LEDBAT has been standardized byIETF and is widely deployed within the official BitTorrent client.Unfortunately, the tuning of LEDBAT parameters is revealed to highly depend onthe network conditions. In the worst case scenario, LEDBAT flows can starveother traffic such as commercial traffic performing over a satellite link.LEDBAT also suffers from an intra-unfairness issue, called the latecomeradvantage. All these reasons often prevent operators to allow the use of suchprotocol over wireless and long-delay link as a misconfiguration can overloadthe link capacity. Therefore, we design FLOWER, a new delay-based transportprotocol, as an alternative to LEDBAT. By using a fuzzy controller to modulatethe sending rate, FLOWER aims to solve LEDBAT issues while fulfilling the roleof an LBE protocol. Our simulation results show that FLOWER can carry LBEtraffic not only in the long delay context, but in a wide range of networkconditions where LEDBAT usually fails.

In this thesis, we present a MAC-layer packet scheduling algorithm, called Best-effort Packet Scheduling Algorithm(BPA), for real-time switched Ethernet networks. BPA considers a message model where application messages have trans-node timeliness requirements that are specified using Jensen's benefit functions. The algorithm seeks to maximize aggregate message benefit by allowing message packets to inherit benefit functions of their parent messages and scheduling packets to maximize aggregate packet-level benefit. Since the packet scheduling problem is NP-hard, BPA heuristically computes schedules with a worst-case cost of O(n^2), faster than the O(n^3) cost of the best known Chen and Muhlethaler's Algorithm(CMA) for the same problem. Our simulation studies show that BPA performs the same or significantly better than CMA. We also construct a real-time switched Ethernet by prototyping an Ethernet switch using a Personal Computer(PC) and implementing BPA in the network protocol stack of the Linux kernel for packet scheduling. Our actual performance measurements of BPA using the network implementation reveal the effectiveness of the algorithm. Finally, we derive timeliness feasibility conditions of real-time switched Ethernet systems that use the BPA algorithm. The feasibility conditions allow real-time distributed systems to be constructed using BPA, with guaranteed soft timeliness. / Master of Science

We investigate in detail two multiuser opportunistic scheduling problems in centralized wireless systems: the scheduling of "delay-sensitive" flows with packet delay requirements of a few tens to few hundreds of milliseconds over the air interface, and the scheduling of "best-effort" flows with the objective of minimizing mean file transfer delay. Schedulers for delay-sensitive flows are characterized by a fundamental tradeoff between "maximizing total service rate by being opportunistic" and "balancing unequal queues (or delays) across users". In choosing how to realize this tradeoff in schedulers, our key premise is that "robustness" should be a primary design objective alongside performance. Different performance objectives -- mean packet delay, the tail of worst user's queue distribution, or that of the overall queue distribution -- result in remarkably different scheduling policies. Different design objectives and resulting schedulers are also not equally robust, which is important due to the uncertainty and variability in both the wireless environment and the traffic. The proposed class of schedulers offers low packet delays, less sensitivity to the scheduler parameters and channel characteristics, and a more graceful degradation of service in terms of the fraction of users meeting their delay requirements under transient overloads, when compared with other well-known schedulers. Schedulers for best-effort flows are characterized by a fundamental tradeoff between "maximizing the total service rate" and "prioritizing flows with short residual sizes". We characterize two regimes based on the "degree" of opportunistic gain present in the system. In the first regime -- where the opportunistic capacity of the system increases sharply with the number of users -- the use of residual flow-size information in scheduling will 'not' result in a significant reduction in flow-level delays. Whereas, in the second regime -- where the opportunistic capacity increases slowly with the number of users -- using flow-size information alongside channel state information 'may' result in a significant reduction. We then propose a class of schedulers which offers good performance in either regime, in terms of mean file transfer delays as well as probability of blocking for systems that enforce flow admission control. This thesis provides a comprehensive theoretical study of these fundamental tradeoffs for opportunistic schedulers, as well as an exploration of some of the practical ramifications to engineering wireless systems. / text

Quality of Service (QoS) support for real-time traffic is a critical issue in high speed networks. The previously proposed Delay-Limiter Switch working with the Framed-Deadline Scheduler (FDS) is a combined input-output queuing (CIOQ) packet switch that can provide end-to-end bandwidth and delay guarantees for connection-oriented traffic. The Delay-Limiter Switch works with fixed-size packets. It has a scalable architecture and can provide QoS support for connection-oriented real-time traffic in a low-complexity fashion. The Delay-Limiter Switch serves connectionless traffic by using the remaining resources from the connection-oriented traffic. In this case, efficient management of the residual resources plays an important role on the performance of the connectionless traffic. This thesis work integrates new methods to the Delay-Limiter Switch that can improve the performance of the connectionless traffic while still serving the connection-oriented traffic with the promised QoS guarantees. A new method that makes it possible for the Delay-Limiter Switch to support variable-sized packets is also proposed.

Master 's thesis deals about computer networks, which constitutes a global communication structure and play a very important role in today's society. The rapid development of Internet, the emergence of new multimedia applications and their increasing use of calls to the efficient functioning of the creation of such governance mechanisms of transmission, which are able to secure the required parameters. The thesis deals about the issue of quality of service (QoS) in IP networks. It presents the basic characteristics and requirements of these networks for the transmission of sensitive data by the quality of services, deals with the QoS definition, and describes the essential parameters to be followed to achieve the required quality of service in practical deployment. In addition, lists the various principles and options to ensure QoS in computer networks. Generally, it represents the Cisco 1841 router features and options to ensure quality of service in the network based on these routers. Practical thesis part provides two types of model IP networks, which were designed in order to verify the impact of service quality in real practice. Of the known methods to ensure QoS, which include a mechanism of Integrated services, Differentiated services, it focus its content about the Differentiated Services and the implementation of these in proposed network model. The last part of the work presents the results obtained by the impact of quality of service for the applications and their assessment.

O objeto da dissertação é o estudo de uma classificação das obrigações entre aquelas de meios e as de resultado, as primeiras obrigando o devedor a uma prestação de diligência, as segundas, à realização de uma vantagem para o credor, sem o que não haveria o devedor de exonerar-se. Um estudo histórico abre o trabalho, pesquisando os antecedentes remotos da distinção, até a sua consagração, no Traité de René Demogue, o que tornou famosa a distinção que passou a gerar profundas discussões doutrinárias na França e no resto do mundo. São também tratados os antecedentes mais recentes, o contexto histórico do surgimento da classificação e sua evolução sucessiva, tanto na França quanto em outros países, para, enumeradas algumas das muitas dificuldades envolvidas no estudo do tema, ainda hoje severamente combatido, pesquisar-se, do ponto de vista da estrutura do vínculo obrigacional, como esta classificação se relaciona com a prestação devida. Assim, acredita-se, seria possível dizer se, uma vez que todo vínculo obrigacional surge tendo em vista um resultado, a prestação obrigacional admite uma distinção entre aquelas que implicam uma atividade do devedor limitada por sua diligência (obrigação de meios) e aquelas que somente conduzem a obrigação a seu termo mediante cumprimento uma vez realizado um resultado, ou seja, desde que produzido um benefício específico para o credor (obrigações de resultado). / The purpose of the dissertation is to study the classification of obligations in the ones so called best efforts duty and those referred to as duty to achieve a result, the first imposing to the debtor the duty to act diligently, the second attain a certain benefit to the creditor, without which the debtor would never be exonerated. A historical study initiates the dissertation with the research of the remote antecedents of such classification until its public recognition through the Traité written by René Demogue, which brought it great fame and created deep debates both in France and throughout the world. The recent antecedents of the classification are also pointed out, the historical context of its emergence and successive evolution in France and in other countries, to, after listing some of the many difficulties involved in the study of such subject, strongly criticized even nowadays, research through the scope of the legal relationship how the classification would relate with the duties imposed to the debtor. In doing so, it is believed to be possible to say, since every legal duty emerges to accomplish a certain objective, if would be possible to admit a distinction between duties that imply a conduct limited by diligence (best efforts duty) and those that would only be extinguished by the fulfillment of its purpose, in other words, since a specific result is produce and delivered to the creditor (duty to achieve a result).

MPLS-Based Best-Effort Traffic Engineering Jerapong Rojanarowan 120 Pages Directed by Dr. Henry L. Owen The objective of this research is to develop a multipath traffic engineering framework for best-effort traffic in Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks so as to deliver more equal shares of bandwidth to best-effort users as compared to the traditional shortest-path algorithm. The proposed framework is static and the input to the traffic engineering algorithm is restricted to network topology. Performance evaluation of this framework is conducted by simulation using ns-2 network simulator. In a multi-service capable network, some portion of the bandwidth is reserved for guaranteed services and the leftover portion is dedicated to best-effort service. This research examines the problem of traffic engineering for the remaining network bandwidth that is utilized by best-effort traffic where demands are not known a priori. This framework will result in making the limited available best-effort traffic bandwidth more equitably shared by the best-effort flows over a wide range of demands. Traditional traffic engineering research has not examined best-effort traffic.

O objeto da dissertação é o estudo de uma classificação das obrigações entre aquelas de meios e as de resultado, as primeiras obrigando o devedor a uma prestação de diligência, as segundas, à realização de uma vantagem para o credor, sem o que não haveria o devedor de exonerar-se. Um estudo histórico abre o trabalho, pesquisando os antecedentes remotos da distinção, até a sua consagração, no Traité de René Demogue, o que tornou famosa a distinção que passou a gerar profundas discussões doutrinárias na França e no resto do mundo. São também tratados os antecedentes mais recentes, o contexto histórico do surgimento da classificação e sua evolução sucessiva, tanto na França quanto em outros países, para, enumeradas algumas das muitas dificuldades envolvidas no estudo do tema, ainda hoje severamente combatido, pesquisar-se, do ponto de vista da estrutura do vínculo obrigacional, como esta classificação se relaciona com a prestação devida. Assim, acredita-se, seria possível dizer se, uma vez que todo vínculo obrigacional surge tendo em vista um resultado, a prestação obrigacional admite uma distinção entre aquelas que implicam uma atividade do devedor limitada por sua diligência (obrigação de meios) e aquelas que somente conduzem a obrigação a seu termo mediante cumprimento uma vez realizado um resultado, ou seja, desde que produzido um benefício específico para o credor (obrigações de resultado). / The purpose of the dissertation is to study the classification of obligations in the ones so called best efforts duty and those referred to as duty to achieve a result, the first imposing to the debtor the duty to act diligently, the second attain a certain benefit to the creditor, without which the debtor would never be exonerated. A historical study initiates the dissertation with the research of the remote antecedents of such classification until its public recognition through the Traité written by René Demogue, which brought it great fame and created deep debates both in France and throughout the world. The recent antecedents of the classification are also pointed out, the historical context of its emergence and successive evolution in France and in other countries, to, after listing some of the many difficulties involved in the study of such subject, strongly criticized even nowadays, research through the scope of the legal relationship how the classification would relate with the duties imposed to the debtor. In doing so, it is believed to be possible to say, since every legal duty emerges to accomplish a certain objective, if would be possible to admit a distinction between duties that imply a conduct limited by diligence (best efforts duty) and those that would only be extinguished by the fulfillment of its purpose, in other words, since a specific result is produce and delivered to the creditor (duty to achieve a result).