Networking

The Networking Laboratory embodies the longest running research activity by the members of WATRI dating back to early 1980’s. During this period, the research group has spun off 2 companies in the area of protocol development and implementation. The research group is currently incubating a third company in the area of real time service provision over IP networks.

As a result of the early research activity, the original Distributed Queue Dual Bus (DQDB) protocol was invented in the University of Western Australia. The commercialisation of the invention was carried out by QPSX (1988-1992), a joint venture between Telstra, UWA and the inventors. Prof Cantoni led the design team that implemented the protocol. At the same time, DQDB has become the standard access protocol for Metropolitan Area Networks. The IEEE 802.6 standardisation process was driven by QPSX under the leadership of Prof Budrikis.

Since its invention and its standardisation, the most notable extension of the DQDB protocol has been the Extended DQ (EDQ) protocol, which introduced guaranteed bandwidth without the pre-assignment of slots. The EDQ thus permitted support for real time services with bandwidth on demand. The key feature of the EDQ is that unused real times services bandwidth was dynamically made available for data services. The EDQ protocol has also been standardised by IEEE with significant input from Prof Budrikis. The EDQ was implemented and commercialised by Atmosphere Networks Inc (1997) under the leadership of Prof Cantoni. Atmosphere Networks operated an engineering division in Perth until it was acquired by Ditech Communications (USA).

More recently, in July 2000, following a contribution to IETF on Virtual Wire Per Domain Behaviour by Dr Mercankosk, the Australian Telecommunications CRC has decided to develop a prototype for a possible commercialisation and has set up a project team, led by Prof Cantoni and Dr Siliquini, for its implementation. In May 2002, the technology was named as Circuits on IP (CoIP) and a joint venture between ATcrc and QPSX, and has been established to commercialise the technology.          

The Institute will achieve this by:
          - Conducting generic research to enhance understanding of basic network processes such as switching,
            multiplexing, scheduling, routing and timing;
          - Developing models that provide insight and that simplify the design process;
          - Investigating networking technologies for practical networking solutions;
          - Disseminating technology to industry through training and publishing programs.

The Research and Development is directed to the issues related to the real time service provision over IP networks and addresses the generic areas of:
          - Real time communications;
          - Switching and multiplexing architectures;
          - Scheduling in communications networks;
          - Network capacity management;
          - Timing in telecommunications networks.

Some of the major topics of our current research and development are:
          - Conforming schedulers and their ramifications;
          - The Mean Time to First Failure analysis for real time connections;
          - Extensions to the Distributed Queueing MAC protocol;
          - Implementation of Virtual Wire Behaviour.

A current PhD project investigates the role of virtual time function commonly used in rate-based schedulers. In this work, we focus on rate protection for a real time connection rather than rate guarantees to a real time connection. The unified theory developed gives a clear insight to the expected behaviour of various schedulers. Another current PhD project carries out the Mean Time to First Failure analysis for real time connections. The analysis emphasizes the non-ergodic nature of real-time signal multiplexing. The models developed reveal some unexpected results.