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Aptilo WiMAX Policy Engine |
| Aptilo WiMAX Policy Engine |
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home / solutions / wimax / Aptilo WiMAX Policy Engineaptilo wimax policy engine |
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The Aptilo WiMAX Policy Engine (used in combination with the Aptilo WiMAX AAA+ CoreAptilo WiMAX AAA+ Core) is the “brains” of the WiMAX service. This is in essence, where services are defined and personalized and policies created to control which users access the Internet, their service level (QoS) and billing.
QoS in WiMAX networks is standardized through service flow descriptors.
To make these manageable, Aptilo has created a concept called “service profiles.”
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Aptilo WiMAX AAA+ Core gives you more |
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A service profile is created in the Aptilo Policy Engine module with a set of WiMAX service flow descriptors, WiMAX QoS descriptors and WiMAX NWG prepaid descriptors. These can be standard WiMAX NWG specification attributes as well as vendor-specific.
The service profile can also contain Aptilo proprietary policies such as schedules in order to create time-of-day and day-of-week-based services with differentiated ratings.
For WiMAX 16e networks, the attributes are sent by the Policy Engine via the standards-based R3 interface to an ASN Gateway for enforcement of the QoS policy set in the service profile. For fixed WiMAX 16d networks, the Aptilo Access Controller™Aptilo Access Controller™ can be used for QoS enforcement delivering WiMAX 16e like services over fixed-WiMAXWiMAX 16e like services over fixed-WiMAX.
QoS ParametersQoS Parameters:
The WiMAX QoS descriptors contains a set of parameters used to enforce Quality of Service:
- Traffic priority, the priority of service flows.
- Maximum sustained rate (MSR), the maximum peak rate reserved for the service in bits/s.
- Minimum reserved rate (MRR), the minimum rate reserved for a service flow in bit/s.
- Maximum traffic burst, the maximum burst size of a service flow in bytes.
- Tolerated jitter, the maximum delay variation in milliseconds for the service flow.
- Maximum latency tolerance, the maximum latency (in milliseconds) allowed.
If the user transmits data within the MRR, there is a guarantee of throughput at this level. However, the user is allowed to increase the data rate on a “best effort” basis, but only to the MSR limit. “Best effort” in this context means that if resources are available and bandwidth is available, the increase will be permitted. Increase of the data rates above MSR will not be allowed.
Service providers need to plan their network so that the sum of all MRRs never exceeds the total capacity of the network. Best effort services and MSRs are dynamically accommodated from the excess capacity of the network.
QoS ClassesQoS Classes:
The WiMAX standard defines five QoS classes as shown in table below. This is to make it easier to provision QoS parameters for service flows with the same QoS needs. |
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Unsolicited Grant Service (UGS)Unsolicited Grant Service (UGS) is used for applications that are sensitive for latency and jitter and have fixed-size data packets at a constant bitrate. VoIP without silence suppression is one such application.
Real-Time Variable Rate (RT-VR)Real-Time Variable Rate (RT-VR) is used for real-time applications with variable-size data packet bursts.
This service class offers a variable bit rate, but with a guaranteed minimum rate and guaranteed delay. Typical applications are streaming video and access services for businesses. The operator can allow customers to burst higher if and when there is extra capacity on the network, and guarantee a certain minimum level of throughput. |
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Enhanced Real-Time Variable Rate (ERT-VR)Enhanced Real-Time Variable Rate (ERT-VR) was introduced with the 802.16e standard. It is used for real-time applications with variable packet sizes. VoIP with silence suppression is a good example of such an application.
Non Real-Time Variable Rate (NRT-VR)Non Real-Time Variable Rate (NRT-VR) offers a guaranteed bit rate with variable-size data packets but does not guaranteed delay. It is used for applications that are tolerant to delays such as file-transfers.
Best-Effort (BE)Best-Effort (BE) offers no minimum service level. If the available bandwidth is high and there are few users competing for the bandwidth, this can be an excellent choice. BE is what most people experience in their xDSL lines at home today. It is used for applications such as Web browsing and Instant Messaging.
The different QoS classes make use of a certain set of QoS parameters as shown in table below. |
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Each user can have multiple service profiles defining a wide range of QoS parameters, classes and policies. These service profiles are associated with the WiMAX service flow policies as defined by the NWG standard.
Advanced QoS functionalityAdvanced QoS functionality: Aptilo continuously develops advanced QoS functionalities to meet the evolving needs of our customers in WiMAX implementations. One such example is our ‘Dynamic Bandwidth Throttling’ feature in which a service provider offers a service with different bandwidth depending on the accumulated download of data in the current month, in relation to the monthly allowance. The bandwidth for a user can be throttled down dynamically as the monthly allowance is consumed and finally stopped when the prepaid account is depleted. Another example is using schedules to provide different ratings and/or bandwidth for different users at different hours during the day. |
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