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CN-115769557-B - Performance measurement in packet switched communication networks

CN115769557BCN 115769557 BCN115769557 BCN 115769557BCN-115769557-B

Abstract

Methods and systems for providing performance measurements in a packet-switched communication network are disclosed, wherein a performance measurement application run by a user communication device monitors the performance of a packet flow exchanged by a user application run by the user communication device with the packet-switched communication network. Such monitoring includes providing values of performance parameters associated with the packet flows. If a fault condition affecting the packet flow is detected based on a performance parameter value provided by the performance measurement application, further monitoring of the performance of the packet flow is activated by one or more measurement points located within the packet switched communication network on the path of the packet flow. Such further monitoring includes providing values of further performance parameters associated with the packet stream.

Inventors

  • M. Costigrio

Assignees

  • 意大利电信股份公司

Dates

Publication Date
20260512
Application Date
20210624
Priority Date
20200626

Claims (11)

  1. 1. A method for providing performance measurements of a packet switched communication network (200), the method comprising: a) -monitoring, by a performance measurement application (10) running by a user communication device (1), the performance of at least one packet flow (Pk, pk ') of user packets, the user packets being exchanged by a user application (A1) running by the user communication device (1) with the packet switched communication network (200) to provide communication services provided by a service provider to the user communication device (1), the monitoring comprising providing values (PP (i)) of at least one performance parameter related to the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk'); b) Detecting by said performance measurement application (10) a fault condition affecting said at least one packet flow (Pk, pk') based on said value (PP (i)) of said at least one performance parameter provided by said performance measurement application (10), and C) In response to detecting the fault condition, further monitoring of performance of the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk ') is activated by at least one measurement point (11) located within the packet-switched communications network (200) on the path of the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk'), the further monitoring comprising providing a value (PP '(i)) of at least one further performance parameter associated with the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk').
  2. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein step b) comprises comparing the value (PP (i)) of the at least one performance parameter with a predefined Threshold (TH), and detecting the fault condition when one or more consecutive values (PP (i)) of the at least one performance parameter exceeds the predefined Threshold (TH).
  3. 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein step b) comprises informing the measurement management server (12) of the fault condition by sending an alarm message from the performance measurement application (10) to the measurement management server (12) cooperating with the performance measurement application (10) and the at least one measurement point (11).
  4. 4. A method according to claim 3, wherein step c) comprises sending, by the measurement management server (12), an activation message to the at least one measurement point (11).
  5. 5. A method according to claim 3, wherein the at least one measurement point (11) is preconfigured to monitor packets comprising a predefined dedicated identifier, and wherein step c) comprises sending, by the measurement management server (12), an instruction to the performance measurement application (10) to insert the predefined dedicated identifier into the at least one packet stream (Pk, pk').
  6. 6. The method according to any of claims 3 to 5, wherein step a) further comprises sending a periodic acknowledgement message from the performance measurement application (10) to the measurement management server (12) informing the measurement management server (12) that the monitoring is ongoing and that a fault condition is not detected, as long as a fault condition is not detected.
  7. 7. The method according to any of claims 3 to 5, wherein step a) further comprises sending an update message from the performance measurement application (10) to the measurement management server (12), the update message comprising a periodic update of the value (PP (i)) of the at least one performance parameter.
  8. 8. A method according to any of claims 3 to 5, wherein step c) further comprises sending an update message from the at least one measurement point (11) to the measurement management server (12), the update message comprising a periodic update of the value (PP' (i)) of the at least one further performance parameter.
  9. 9. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein step a) comprises: -activating a marking functionality for the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk '), the marking functionality comprising marking upstream packets (Pk) of the at least one packet flow and causing a network node (2) of the packet switched communication network (200) generating downstream packets (Pk ') of the at least one packet flow to mark the downstream packets (Pk '), and -Detecting a marked upstream packet (Pk) sent by said user communication device (1) and/or a marked downstream packet (Pk') received by said user communication device (1), and providing said value (PP (i)) of said at least one performance parameter based on said detection.
  10. 10. The method of claim 9, wherein marking the upstream packet (Pk) of the at least one packet stream at step a) includes setting a value of at least one measurement specific field (MF) in the upstream packet (Pk), and causing a network node (2) of the packet switched communication network (200) that generates a downstream packet (Pk ') of the packet stream to mark the downstream packet (Pk ') includes causing the network node (2) to set a value of at least one measurement specific field (MF) in the downstream packet (Pk ').
  11. 11. A system (100) for providing performance measurements of a packet switched communication network (200), the system (100) comprising: -a performance measurement application (10) configured to monitor performance of at least one packet flow (Pk, pk ') of user packets when run by a user communication device (1), the user application (A1) running by the user communication device (1) exchanging the user packets with the packet switched communication network (200) to provide communication services provided by a service provider to the user communication device (1), the monitoring comprising providing a value (PP (i)) of at least one performance parameter related to the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk') -At least one measurement point (11) located within the packet switched communication network (200) on the path of the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk '), the at least one measurement point (11) being configured to perform a further monitoring of the performance of the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk ') in response to detecting a fault condition affecting the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk ') based on the value (PP (i)) of the at least one performance parameter provided by the performance measurement application (10), the further monitoring comprising providing a value (PP ' (i)) of at least one further performance parameter related to the at least one packet flow (Pk, pk ').

Description

Performance measurement in packet switched communication networks Technical Field The present invention relates to the field of communication networks. In particular, the present invention relates to a method and system for performing performance measurements in a packet switched communication network. Background In a packet switched communication network, a packet stream is transmitted from a source node to a destination node through a possible intermediate node. Exemplary packet-switched networks are IP (internet protocol) networks, ethernet networks, and MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) networks. The IP network may support quitc (fast UDP internet connection), a transport layer (layer 4) network protocol designed to support multiplexed connections between two endpoints (client and server) via the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). The performance of a packet switched communication network is typically measured in terms of packet loss and/or delay and/or jitter. These measurements may be unidirectional or round-trip. Measurement techniques are known that operate directly on packet flows carrying user data without the need to transmit any artificial packets (such as ping packets) dedicated to the purpose of the measurement. These techniques generally provide for marking packets of a packet stream to be measured and for deploying one or more measurement points on the path of the marked packets. Each measurement point provides one or more performance parameters (typically counters and/or timestamps) associated with the marked packets, which are then used to determine the performance of that packet stream. Some of these techniques require that a single measurement point be implemented on the path of the marked packet that is capable of autonomously determining a performance measurement (e.g., a packet loss measurement or a delay measurement) based on its own performance parameter(s) (i.e., without using the performance parameter(s) provided by other measurement points). Trammel et al, internet draft "The addition of a Spin Bit to the QUIC Transport Protocol draft-trammel-QUIC-spin-01", 12/13/2017, describe adding a so-called "time-lapse spin bit" (or simply "spin bit") in the QUIC header that enables RTT (round trip time) measurements between the client and server of the QUIC connection to be made through a measurement point located on the connection. The addition of a so-called lost bit in the quench header, which enables round-trip packet loss measurements between the client and the server of the quench connection to be made through a measurement point located on the connection, is described by cociglio et al, internet draft "New Spin bit enabled measurements with one or two bits draft-cfb-ippm-spinbit-new-measurements-01",2019, 7, 1. The internet draft "Packet Loss Signaling for Encrypted Protocols draft-ferrieuxhamchaoui-QUIC-lossbits-03", month 1, 2020, describes an extension of the qic protocol that introduces two bits in the packet header, namely Q bit (sQuared signal bit) and L bit (loss event bit), which enable different types of unidirectional packet loss measurements (including end-to-end measurements, upstream measurements and downstream measurements) to be made through measurement points located on the connection. Disclosure of Invention The applicant has noted that providing a performance measure (e.g. by any of the above known techniques) indicative of the actual overall performance of the packet switched network and at the same time providing a result with a desired granularity requires that the performance of all packet flows transmitted through the network, or at least a significant portion thereof, be monitored separately. Since the nodes of the communication network are typically spanned by several packet flows (typically from thousands of packet flows at DSLAMs and enodebs to millions of packet flows at backbone nodes, peer nodes and WAN gateways), the measurement points implemented at the network nodes must be configured to detect the several packet flows and provide performance measurements associated with each packet. This requires a large number of calculations of the measurement points. In view of the foregoing, applicants have appreciated that there is a need to provide a method and system for performing performance measurements in a packet-switched communication network that overcomes or mitigates the above-described disadvantages. In particular, the applicant has addressed the problem of providing a method and system for performing performance measurements in a packet switched communication network, which allows to reduce the amount of computation required for measurement point(s) deployed within the network. According to an embodiment of the present invention, this problem is solved by providing a computer program product (also referred to as "performance measurement application" in the following description) adapted to be installed on a user communication device, such as a smart