AGENDA, PRESENTATIONS, CONCLUSIONS, NEXT STEPS
The Open Group’s Quality of Service Taskforce
Conducted Roundtable Discussion on Service Level Agreement (SLA) Requirements
Hosted by Quarry Technologies
Moderated by Industry Analyst John McConnellHeld in Burlington, Massachusetts on April 30, 2001
SLAs for Application-Specific QoS for Carrier’s IP-based VPN Services
The Service Level Agreement Roundtable Discussion sponsored by The Open Group’s QoS Task Force and Quarry Technologies, a member of The Quality of Service Taskforce, conducted an interesting session in Burlington MA, USA on April 30, 2001
The Goal: To drive towards a common understanding of the requirements that end-user organizations have for application-specific QoS over Carrier IP networks and what steps carriers can take to meet these requirements.
The Context:
Increasingly IP–based Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are being used as alternatives to leased line, Frame Relay or ATM based private networks. However even the most basic of QoS guarantees, in terms of throughput and latency over shared IP networks (and certainly over the Internet), have rarely been attainable in carrier’s IP infrastructures today.
Yet most agree that IP-based networking offers the best hope for application-specific QoS since most applications are now IP-based. It will be essential for end-user organizations to migrate their mission critical business applications to IP-based VPNs. With the growing importance of Voice over IP (VOIP) and other real-time applications over IP these demands for application-specific QoS on VPNs, and for the Internet generally, are growing rapidly.
However, while the technology of QoS on IP networks has advanced considerably in recent years, not as much progress has be made in how Service Level Agreements for QoS on IP networks should be specified, structured, and/or enforced, nor how end-user organization can request, signal or manage the QoS that they require over their Carrier’s IP networks.
The Agenda and Presentations
8:00 Breakfast and Informal Discussion
8:30 Introductions and Review of the Agenda – Jean Hammond, Quarry Technologies
8:45 Introduction to the Open Group QoS Task Force – David Lounsbury, VP R&D, The Open Group
9:00 A Statement of the Problem and Review of the service attributes that should be measured – John McConnell, McConnell Consulting
9:30 End-user and Application Designer view of the problem and requirements – Round Table
10:30 Carrier view of the problem and the possibilities – Round Table
11:15 Product Vendor views of the problem and possible technical solutions :
Sitara Networks, Mark Strangio
Quarry Technologies, Jean Hammond
12:00 Discussion of vendor ideas and proposals – Round Table
12:30 Lunch and Wrap-Up
Reports and Conclusions:
SLA Reports and Conclusions.pdf
Sample SLA’s
Next Steps:
The discussion that was begun at this SLA Roundtable meeting will continue on several fronts:
1) The QoS Taskforce’s Network Working Group will continue to evolve the requirements and measurements for SLAs with respect to application profiling and traffic shaping. It will investigate the use of business scenarios as a way of representing a case for the standardization of application profiling in terms of its impact on the end-user, the application vendor, the edge and core hardware and software vendors and the service providers.
2) The QoS Taskforce will provide a follow-on face-to-face meeting as part of their QoS Open-Working sessions, held during The Open Group’s Quarterly Conference in Austin, Texas. Visit http://www.opengroup.org/conferences/q301, where you can see the QoS Agenda for July 17th – 18th, by clicking on the QoS session button on the right of the conference web page. You can also register on line at the above conference site.
3) The QoS Taskforce will sponsor an On-line Forum Site as a catalyst to candid discussion on SLAs, Application Profiling, and other topics related to end-to-end QoS, where end-to-end includes Enterprise Servers and Applications, Wide Area Networks, and Remote Services that encompass Service Providers and Data Centers. Visit http://www.opengroup.org/qos/online_forum.htm for online discussion threads.
About Quarry Technologies
Quarry Technologies provides solutions that enable network service providers to increase revenue, decrease customer churn, and deliver Intelligence for the Service Edge. As big, fast routers and optical switches proliferate in the core of the new public network, the vital need for intelligent service systems has emerged at the network edge.
Quarry Technologies designs, manufactures and sells a highly reliable, carrier-class IP service edge switching solution used by network service providers to effectively create and deploy high-margin, advanced IP services for business customers.
About The Moderator
John McConnell, President of McConnell Associates, has over 25 years experience in networking, beginning with the development of the ARPANET and the Internet. Cited as "one of the most frequently quoted and influential networking analysts", John has delivered solutions for end-users as well as leading vendors. He has consulted with clients in the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Based in Boulder Colorado, McConnell Associates concentrates on the service level and eBusiness management areas and related areas such as policy-based management, measurement, and business-focused solutions. The company offers a strategic perspective on the emerging issues and trends in this key sector through custom consulting, market research and training.
About The Open Group’s QoS Taskforce
The Open Group’s QoS Taskforce, founded in February 2001, is a customer and vendor forum comprised of member organizations chartered with the following vision, focus and objectives.
The Vision of QoS Taskforce is to further a standard approach to the propagation of customer-to-vendor and vendor-to-vendor QoS requirements and measurements in a manner that is quantifiable, observable, and interoperable and achieves a process for end-to-end Quality of Service assurance which is acceptable to vendors and customers.
The Focus of the QoS Task Force is complete End-to-End. That is, Quality of Service within operating and embedded systems, within enterprise servers and applications, through local and wide area networks, wire and wireless, to service providers and data centers and back again. Within this end-to-end paradigm there will be strong emphasis on evolving the Service Level Agreement, not only as a means to specify requirements and measurements for end-to-end service levels, but also as a means to drive resource and application management in order to dynamically adjust service level provisions in accordance with Service Level Agreements.
The Objectives of The QoS Taskforce are to determine, what should be done to make existing QoS standards, service level agreements, and policies more effective, and where standards and policies do not exist, what should be done to create them. Ultimately, we will decide which initiatives (new or existing) will bring us closest to our vision, and then to put our collective resources toward the success of those initiatives.