KR100759809B1 - Traffic processing method and network management apparatus in system for charging based on quality of service - Google Patents

Abstract

According to the present invention, there is provided a traffic processing method for charging by QoS according to the present invention. process; Looking up a label and a destination address included in the packet at a network operator device and determining a path to a corresponding subscriber station to provide a service with a corresponding QoS; And calculating the number of packets for each EXP field included in the label and the label and recording the data in a monitoring table as billing calculation data provided by the service.

According to the present invention, by transmitting a packet including an EXP field indicating QoS information set by a subscriber, the network operator device can determine a path to a destination through a memory-saved forwarding lookup table. By using the number of packets as billing information, there is an advantage of easy lookup and data management.

Description

Traffic processing method and network management apparatus in system for charging based on quality of service}

1 is a block diagram illustrating a traffic processing procedure between a subscriber station and a network operator device according to the present invention.

2 is a block diagram of a network operator device for explaining a traffic monitoring and lookup procedure according to the present invention.

<Explanation of symbols for main parts of the drawings>

101 ... Subscriber Terminal 102 ... Traffic Types

103 ... subscriber device 104 ... network operator device

202 ... Data receiver 203 ... Data lookup unit

205 ... data monitoring unit 207 ... packet generation unit.

The present invention relates to a traffic processing method and network operator device for billing on a network, and more particularly, by inserting a label assigned to each subscriber into a packet and managing the amount of packets used by the subscriber for each quality of service (QoS). The present invention relates to a traffic processing method and network operator device for billing by QoS, which efficiently performs lookup and monitoring of traffic and enables billing according to the type and usage of a service used by a subscriber.

Recently, as various kinds of services are provided from the service provider to the subscriber through the Internet, a switch to the method of performing the billing according to the type and the amount of the provided services is considered as an efficient management problem of the network resources.

In order to charge in this way, in order to charge according to the type and usage of the service used by the subscriber, traffic must be monitored and managed according to the user and service.

Conventionally, the network device uses five methods such as destination address, source address, port number, and protocol for traffic monitoring. Also, to distinguish users, port of L2 switch is generally used as subscriber device. Was used.

That is, this traffic processing method performs 5-tuples lookup on five items of destination and source address included in packet, destination and source port number, and protocol in network operator device in order to classify service by subscriber. As data, there is a problem in that a large amount of memory for a forwarding table is required because the number of packets used by a subscriber must be managed for each subscriber and each 5-tuples.

In addition, the monitoring and forwarding processing of the packet in the network operator device is heavily loaded, and in many cases, a separate server for billing for service provision is required depending on the amount of service.

The technical problem to be achieved by the present invention is to reduce the memory of the forwarding table for lookup in the network operator device by transmitting a packet including the EXP field indicating the QoS information set by the subscriber to the label and label assigned to each subscriber in the subscriber station In addition, the present invention provides a subscriber with a traffic processing method and a network operator device for billing by QoS to estimate billing data for each QoS.

Traffic processing method for billing by QoS to achieve the above technical problem of the present invention,

Inserting, by the subscriber station, an EXP field including a label assigned to each subscriber and the QoS field included in the label and having QoS information directly set by the subscriber for each service type in a data packet; Looking up a label and a destination address included in the packet at a network operator device and determining a path to a corresponding subscriber station to provide a service with a corresponding QoS; And calculating the number of packets for each EXP field included in the label and the label and recording the data in a monitoring table as billing calculation data provided by the service.

The forwarding table may include a destination address, the label, and an EXP field constituting the label.

In addition, the label is characterized in that inserted between the layer 2 and layer 3 in the traffic form of the packet.

In addition, the EXP field is characterized in that three bits.

In addition, the network operator device of the traffic processing system for billing by QoS to achieve another technical problem according to the present invention,

Data receiving means for receiving, from the subscriber station, a packet including an label assigned to each subscriber and an EXP field included in the label and having QoS information directly set by the subscriber for each service type; Data lookup means for looking up a label and a destination address included in the packet and determining a path to a corresponding subscriber station; Data monitoring means for calculating the label and the number of packets for each EXP field included in the label and recording the data in a monitoring table as billing calculation data by service provision; And packet generation means for encoding and transmitting service data with a corresponding QoS in a path to a corresponding subscriber station determined by the data lookup means.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 is a block diagram illustrating a traffic processing procedure between a subscriber station and a network operator device according to the present invention.

In FIG. 1, reference numeral 101 denotes a subscriber station inserting a label assigned to a subscriber and setting a desired QoS information in the EXP field included in the label to encode the packet, and 102 denotes a subscriber station from the subscriber station 101 to the subscriber device. Indicated the type of traffic to be transmitted, 103 is a subscriber device, the data type including the label is processed and transmitted. 104 is a network operator device, and receives a packet transmitted from the subscriber device 103 to determine a path using a label and a destination address included in the packet, and 105 is a monitoring table for billing for a service. In 104, the number of packets is counted for each EXP field for the label indicating the subscriber. Also, 106 is a table for forwarding that the network service equipment 104 looks up to transmit a service on a corresponding path.

In FIG. 1, the subscriber station 101 inserts a label allocated to each subscriber between two layers and three layers in a traffic form, and sets the desired QoS information in the EXP field for each service type included in the label.

The inserted label may be determined at the stage of the subscriber joining the service site of the network operator, and the procedure of allocating the EXP field for each service may use a separate application program. Three bits are allocated to the EXP field, and eight classes of QoS can be configured by a combination of three bits.

In this way, the subscriber determines the QoS for each service used by the subscriber so that the subscriber can freely determine the QoS policy suitable for the subscriber. In other words, if you set a high level of QoS for a specific service and a low level of QoS for all other services, you do not need to set a high level consistently for all services, but you are provided with a high quality service for a specific service as a whole. You can lower the fee.

In addition, specific items of the QoS required by the subscriber for each service may be determined according to the QoS that can be provided in the network owned by the network operator. For example, if millions of paths can be guaranteed for bandwidth and delay in the network of the network operator, eight classes of services provided to the subscriber station 101 can contract for the bandwidth and delay desired by the subscriber. The operator device 104 may guarantee a corresponding bandwidth and delay for a path determined through a lookup using a destination address and a label.

That is, eight types of services may be provided to each subscriber station 101, and specific items according to service types may be determined according to QoS processing capabilities that a network possessed by a network operator can provide.

The traffic form 102 transmitted from the subscriber station 101 to the subscriber device 103 is the same as the existing MPLS packet form. The label included in the packet is a value assigned to each subscriber, and the EXP field included in the label is assigned for each service type.

The subscriber device 103 has a function of processing a data form including a packet transmitted from the subscriber station 101 or a packet transmitted from the network operator device 104.

The network operator device 104 determines a path for forwarding service data by using a label and a destination address included in the received packet. Such a path may be provided using MPLS and other methods as a path having a QoS characteristic contracted with a subscriber.

This lookup approach significantly reduces the lookup key compared to the conventional 5-tuples lookup, greatly reducing the memory required for the forwarding table 106 and improving lookup performance. In particular, when the protocol is Internet Protocol version 6 (IPpv6), since the length of the bit string that is looked up at the time of 5-tuple lookup is larger than that of IPv4, the number of bits can be relatively large and the memory can be reduced more efficiently by applying the present invention. Can be.

In the monitoring table 105 described below, a packet count value is recorded for each EXP field for a label indicating a subscriber, and such data is used as data for later charging.

2 is a block diagram of a network operator device for explaining a traffic monitoring and lookup procedure according to the present invention.

The network operator device 104 shown in FIG. 2 includes a data receiver 202 for checking whether an input packet is a legitimate packet, a data lookup unit 203 for performing a function of looking up data of a forwarding table, and service billing data. And a packet generation unit 207 for encoding and transmitting service data according to a result of the data lookup unit 203.

The data receiving unit 202 of the network operator device 104 receives the packet transmitted from the subscriber station 101, wherein the packet received through the subscriber device 103 has the same form as the MPLS packet.

The data receiver 202 determines whether the input packet is a legitimate packet or whether to process the received packet through a procedure.

The data lookup unit 203 represents a block for performing a function of looking up a data packet input through the data receiver 202. The lookup key is a destination address and label recorded in the forwarding table 106, and as a result of the lookup, a path for providing the QoS of the service to the subscriber station is determined. As a path for providing QoS, various known methods may be applied, and any method may be used in the present invention. As a result, the specific path information is determined according to the method provided by the network provider.

On the other hand, the data monitoring unit 205 is a block for monitoring for charging, calculates the number of forwarded packets for each received label and EXP field, and records in the monitoring table 105 that manages the result of monitoring the received packets. do. The label recorded in such a table and the number of packets per EXP field are used as data for determining later charging.

The data lookup and monitoring function described above may be performed simultaneously. The destination address and the label may be extracted from the packet, the lookup may be performed, and the number of packets may be counted and monitored for each EXP field of the label.

The packet generation unit 207 encodes the service data forwarded to the subscriber station 101, and the encoding scheme is determined according to the scheme provided by the network operator. If using MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching), it is encoded in the same manner as the received packet.

According to the present invention described above, a subscriber station transmits a packet including an EXP field indicating QoS information set by a subscriber to a label and a label allocated to each subscriber at a subscriber station, and thus, the network operator device uses the destination address and label extracted from the packet. The memory-saved forwarding lookup table can be looked up to determine the route to the destination. In addition, the number of packets counted for each setting value of the EXP field included in the label is used as subscriber billing information, so that lookup and data management are easy. In addition, the subscriber can easily change and set the QoS for the service.

Although the present invention has been described with reference to the embodiments shown in the drawings, those skilled in the art will understand that various modifications and equivalent other embodiments are possible therefrom. Therefore, the true technical protection scope of the present invention will be defined by the technical spirit of the appended claims.

Claims (5)

Receiving, from the subscriber station, a data packet including a label assigned to each subscriber and an EXP field inserted in the label and having QoS information directly set by the subscriber for each service type; Looking up a label and a destination address included in the packet and determining a path to a corresponding subscriber station to provide a service with a corresponding QoS; And And calculating the number of packets per EXP field included in the label and the label, and recording the data in a monitoring table as billing calculation data provided by the service. The method of claim 1, The label is a traffic processing method for charging by QoS, characterized in that inserted in between the layer 2 and layer 3 in the traffic form of the packet. The method of claim 1, The EXP field is a traffic processing method for charging by QoS, characterized in that 3 bits. Data receiving means for receiving, from the subscriber station, a data packet including a label assigned to each subscriber and an EXP field included in the label and having QoS information directly set by the subscriber for each service type; Data lookup means for looking up a label and a destination address included in the packet and determining a path to a corresponding subscriber station; Data monitoring means for calculating the label and the number of packets for each EXP field included in the label and recording the data in a monitoring table as billing calculation data by service provision; And And packet generation means for encoding and transmitting service data with a corresponding QoS in a path to a corresponding subscriber station determined by the data lookup means.  The network operator device of claim 4, wherein the label is inserted between Layer 2 and Layer 3 in the packet traffic form.

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