Resource admission control in access networks

With the growing demand for high-bandwidth video services such as Internet Protocol television (IPTV), the packet network must be adapted in order to support these services with the required quality. Evolutions of broadband access technologies such as very high speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) and Gigabit passive optical networks (GPONs) create this possibility. Nevertheless, the bandwidth on the access link (the first mile) and the access node uplink (the second mile) remain a limited resource. This paper discusses how resource admission control (RAC) can be used in access networks to protect against exceptional overloads and maintain quality for active services. It describes the behavior of a local RAC function in the access node in a case where broadcast IPTV (BTV) and video on demand (VoD) share bandwidth on the first mile and shows that this solution is scalable from a message load point of view. (C) 2008 Alcatel-Lucent.