IP Packet charging for multimedia services

CHAPTER I: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Background

Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia requires the support of guaranteed services and charging to provide a valuable service for potential customers. The quality of long distance Multimedia files via the Internet is heavily affected by the load of the links that the traffic of data (Multimedia files) has to traverse. As different quality requirements of users exist, the Internet has to support different service classes. Therefore, an advanced services network model is required.

In turn, and that is the main motivation for this work, if at least two traffic classes exist on the Internet, the right incentive must exist for any user to choose the traffic class that optimally fits the necessary requirements and will be the most efficient in terms ofprice to be paid.

Therefore, the integration of IP packet charging model and Quality-of-Service (QoS) interfaces for IP in multimedia services is important to stimulate the future use of the Internet. This work gives an overview of IP packet charging model for multimedia services, an experimental Platform for standards-based IP Multimedia that are enhanced with QoS and packet charging support.

I.1. Introduction

The traffic of multimedia services is the one that occupy a large bandwidth in a network, now days the growth of this traffic is becoming significant that can cause many failures inside a network.

send all file packets inside the network, and the aims of giving IP are addressing and choosing the best path for the packets to reach destination.

This project set out to implement an IP packet charging model inside a network with the main objective of maintaining the Quality of Services, The traditional way of handling this is to integrate QoS mechanisms with the application logic, i.e., making the components self-adaptive.

I.3. Statement of the problem

Network connection are able to carry many types of services such as voice, data, images, and video (flow of packets).This study deals with problems of streaming video, in traditional streaming, buffer are used in order to transfer data, and the QoS is still not satisfactory because of many features like packets loss (which is very high), latency time is great and the bandwidth is saturated.

However, IP multimedia provides services based on Internet and it is concerned with multimedia data transmission. The selection of destination address and choice of multimedia services quality is required in order to get an easy transmission of multimedia services.

Traditional streaming used to send packets inside the network without using packets switching which decreased the number of packets inside the network and cannot improve the high performance and quick relay of multimedia services, which means there is:

> A high bandwidth used during packets traffic. > A great latency time.

> A great number ofpackets lost during the traffic

As solution, IP packet charging models for Multimedia services was been chosen, which could help to solve the problem of charging data to the appropriate destination. In this project understanding how packet switching and circuit switching work is helpful because it can be used when transmitted multimedia services.

I.4 Objectives of the study

The principal objective of this project is:

> To analyze network performance when using traditional streaming and packets charging models

> To analyze queuing delay and jitter buffer during traffic.

> IP packet charging model implementation for multimedia services

> To analyze QoS variation during packets traffic i.e. latency, jitter and bandwidth variation.

I.5. Hypothesis of the study This project aims at verifying the following hypothesis:

«It is possible to implement the IP packet charging models for Multimedia Services in order to get a high performance and quick relay of multimedia services.»

I.6. Methodology

A methodology is a series of choices such us choices about what information and data to gather, Choices about how to analyze the information and data that you gather and other methodological choices. In This project the choice made is the one that helped to analyze the network by making comparison and it is called a comparative research.

Comparative methodology is the act of comparing two or more things with a view to discovering something about one or all of the things being compared. This technique often utilizes multiple disciplines in one study.

When it comes to method, the majority agreement is that there is no methodology particular to comparative research. ¹In this case the comparison done between traditional streaming and IP packet charging models in a network.

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_research,September 24, 2006

I.7. Interest of the project I.7.1. Personal interest

Working on this project is acquire the practical experience in networking (in general) and in IP network (in particular) that didn't acquire before, by gathering different concepts from different courses studied during our graduate program, and put up a system that is helpful.

I.7.2. Community interest

Like the National University of Rwanda many other organizations, like MTN (Mobile Telephone Network) and other companies that require Multimedia files traffic, this project through the use of IP packets charging models technology would provide a cost effective technic for using their existing network infrastructure to make a good Quality of Services to their customers.

I.8. Approach to the study

The study will be focused on network performance during Multimedia traffics. It is composed ofthe following phases:

> Requirement analysis

> Implementation

> Testing

> Operations & Maintenance

I.9. Scope of the project

The scope of this work is to implement IP packets charging models for multimedia services such as text, image, audio, and video and so on, but in this project multimedia focused on is video, with this live video streaming will be done and the problem of buffering (packets loss) will be treated as well. All this will help to show a video in real time.

I.10. Organization of the study This study is organized in chapters:

Chapter 1: This chapter concerns the general introduction about the project Chapter 2: This chapter concerns the theoretical concepts related to the project

Chapter 3: This chapter concerns the research methodology and analysis of

multimedia services.

Chapter 4: This chapter focuses on the implementation ofIP packet charging model for multimedia services

Chapter 5: The last Chapter is focusing for Conclusion and Suggestions.