Differentiated classes of service and flow management using an hybrid broker

Abstract

Recently, mobile networks have been overloaded with a considerable amount of data traffic. The current paper proposes a management service for mobile environments, using policies and quality metrics, which ensure a better usage of network resources with a more fine-grained management based on flows with different classes of service and transmission rates. This management of flows is supported through a closed innovative control loop among a flexible brokerage service in the network, and agents at the mobile terminals. It also allows the terminals to make well-informed decisions about their connections to enhance the number of connected flows per technology and the individual service level offered to each flow. Our results indicate that the proposed solution optimizes the usage of available 4G network resources among a high number of differentiated flows in several scenarios where access technologies are extremely overloaded whilst protecting, through a low complexity scheme, the flows associated to users that have celebrated more expensive contracts with their network operators.