Writing in EE Times, Mobidia CEO Fay Arjomandi offers suggestions for managing IP traffic on wireless networks with QoS:
Achieving the best results requires the mobile device to participate with the carrier network as an active and intelligent element so that it can share the responsibilities of network traffic delivery management in a wireless-friendly manner. A service element within the device cooperating with the carrier node would enable the device to handle the following tasks:
* Determine the type of service and identify its nature (e.g., interactive, background or real-time).
* Apply the proper network policy to each different type of service on the device.
* Determine the available network type, its characteristics, the available channel, status and allocation.
* Schedule and prioritize traffic based on the service type.
* Use a network-aware and network-friendly transport layer protocol for data communication over the wireless network link.
In an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture this service element resides underneath the IMS client or can be seen as part of the IMS client framework.
This should all sound familiar to anyone who’s read the recent posts on this blog, of course. Mark Goldberg suggests the “stupid network” model is on its last legs because it doesn’t allow this sort of interaction. While it served us well when networks and the traffic they handled were uniform, as we move to more diverse data streams over less reliable media (wireless), we have to move toward a more cooperative approach. Technology is often unkind to our idealistic illusions.