Networking Services: QoS, Signaling, Processes

The book has been structured around the Next Generation Network (NGN) framework, which separates the transport network, services, and signaling protocols into the service stratum and the transport stratum. The service stratum is the control plane for the establishment of networking sessions, and the transport stratum is the data plane over which the data of a networking service is transported. Within this context, the author explains in detail the signaling protocols used in the service stratum for setting up networking services, and the Quality of Service (QoS) architectures used in the transport network to guarantee QoS. Specifically, the author explains topics such as SIP, IMS, MPLS, DiffServ, LDP, RSVP-TE, congestion control, RACF, and VPNs; describes IMS-based architectures for popular networking services such as VoIP, presence, instant messaging, video conferencing, multimedia telephony, IPTV, and service and device continuity; describes queueing theory and simulation techniques used to dimension the capacity of a networking service. The material is illustrated with problems and projects.   This is a textbook for graduate and senior undergraduate students in computer science and computer engineering, and also a reference book for networking engineers.