Performance Analysis of DiffServ based Quality of Service in a Multimedia Wired Network and VPN effect using OPNET

Abstract: Quality of Service (QoS) techniques are applied in IP networks to utilize available network resources in the most efficient manner to minimize delays and delay variations (jitters) in network traffic having multiple type of services. Multimedia services may include voice, video and database. Researchers have done considerable work on queuing disciplines to analyze and improve QoS performance in wired and wireless IP networks. This paper highlights QoS analysis in a wired IP network with more realistic enterprise modeling and presents simulation results of a few statistics not presented and discussed before. Four different applications are used i.e. FTP, Database, Voice over IP (VoIP) and Video Conferencing (VC). Two major queuing disciplines are evaluated i.e. 'Priority Queuing' and 'Weighted Fair Queuing' for packet identification under Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP). The simulation results show that WFQ has an edge over PQ in terms of queuing delays and jitters experienced by low priority services. For high priority traffic, dependency of 'Traffic Drop', 'Buffer Usage' and 'Packet Delay Variation' on selected buffer sizes is simulated and discussed to evaluate QoS deeper. In the end, it is also analyzed how network's database service with applied Quality of Service may be affected in terms of throughput (average rate of data received) for internal network users when the server is also accessed by external user(s) through Virtual Private Network (VPN).