Technical Information Entering the next generation telecom market DISCMAN – Differentiated Services – Network Configuration and Management Traffic Engineering in Differentiated Service Networks

Differentiated Services (DiffServ) has been proposed to meet new requirements for IP networks. This architecture is able to offer a range of different Classes of Service (CoS) to different customers. To achieve the goal, DiffServ must though be supported by other mechanisms and methods that can be used to control and engineer the network. In this respect Traffic Engineering will play an important role. This document focuses mainly on TE aspects related to the network planning phase, but provides also some insight on techniques that can be used for reconfiguring the network in real-time. Its main objective is at providing a consistent set of guidelines for configuring and dimensioning a Differentiated Services IP network based on the available technology. The exploitation of MPLS technology to achieve these objectives has been considered when relevant.