On-Board RSVP: An Extension of RSVP to Support Real-Time Services in On-Board IP Networks

The extension of Internet services to public transport passengers is slowly becoming inevitable. To this end, it is envisaged that high-speed local area networks will be deployed on-board public transport vehicles (e.g., buses, trains, ships and planes). The on-board LAN will be connected to the Internet via an on-board mobile router (MR). The passengers simply connect their devices to the on-board LAN and start enjoying Internet services. The mobility of the entire on-board network including the passenger devices is managed transparently by the MR. However, the mobility of the router (and the entire IP subnet) gives rise to several unique challenges for achieving end-to-end resource reservation. In this paper we propose a novel extension for RSVP, which addresses these issues. The proposed On-Board RSVP protocol can effectively, transparently, and scalably support end-to-end resource reservation in on-board IP networks. A key feature of On-Board RSVP is that it retains the basic building blocks of the original RSVP, minimising the changes required to existing RSVP infrastructure. The high level of dynamism associated with the QoS resource demand in an on-board communication system results in excessive signaling and processing overhead at the MR and the intermediate routers along the end-to-end paths. To address this issue, we propose and discuss two new aggregation schemes for handling the large number of RSVP setup messages: Cardinal Operating Policy (COP) and Temporal Operating Policy (TOP).