Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NETWORK MANAGEMENT Int. J. Network Mgmt 2003; 13: 000–000 (DOI: 10.1002/nem.470) Resource allocation in the new fixed and mobile Internet generation By Guy Pujolle,* Ulf Körner and Harry Perros In this paper we study the scalability issue in the design of a centralized policy server controlling resources in the future IP-based telecom network generation. The policy servers are in charge of controlling and managing QoS, security and mobility in a centralized way in future IP-based telecom networks. Our study demonstrates that the policy servers can be designed in such a manner that they scale with increase in network capacity. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Guy Pujolle works in the Laboratoire LIP6, University of Paris, France, Ulf Körner teaches at Luwn University, Sweden, and Harry Perros at NCSU, USA. * Correspondence to: Guy Pujolle, Laboratoire LIP6, Universite de Paris 6, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex, France. Introduction I n the world of networks, control techniques are crucial. Packet switching networks are like motorways; if there are too many packets travelling down then none of them get through. Both the network and the data flows must be controlled. Flow control is a preventive measure, it limits the data flows to the physical medium’s transfer capacity. We can define the terms flow control more pre- cisely: flow control is an agreement between two entities (the source and the destination) to limit the service’s transmission throughput in accordance with the resources available in the network. When looking at Internet flow control tech- nique, a lot of effort has been through the slow start and congestion avoidance algorithm, the RSVP protocol, the DiffServ and IntServ schemes, etc. However, none of these proposals have been accepted by the Telcos for their IP networks. The only solution they employee is the oversizing solution. However, in the near future there will be mil- lions of fixed terminals and millions of mobile ter- minals to handle. The users waiting for a quality of service, (VoIP, real-time VoD, etc.) will need to support a control of the network that could decline in different QoS bearers. For that reason, a large group of companies are proposing a novel solution that is supported by a policy-based control using a signalling system. In the following section we describe the new control-based networking architecture. Then, we present a queuing model to size the policy center and some results that seem of interest on the scal- ability of this architecture. Finally we conclude with some future extensions of this work. The Telecom Internet The Internet Telecom was born from the aims of the UMTS manufacturers. The core network of UMTS has to transport all kind of information with a high quality of service. The first generation NEM470 12/23/02 7:09 PM Page 1