Automated network games enhancement layer: a proposed architecture

ABSTRACT

In this paper we present the design of the Automated Network Games Enhancement Layer (ANGEL), a novel architecture for meeting Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of real-time network game traffic across consumer broadband links. Consumer access links can become bottlenecks when faced with heterogeneous network traffic (e.g. simultaneous use of online games and peer-to-peer file sharing) and the online gaming experience can be significantly affected by bottleneck queuing. Implementing QoS on these links provides improvement by reducing latency and jitter. In our approach network servers automatically identify traffic that might benefit from QoS and then trigger provisioning of QoS by signaling network elements such as access routers. By placing intelligence within the network, QoS decisions can be transparently made for the game applications without imposing an additional processing cost at the access link router. Our system uniquely uses machine learning methods to perform traffic classification.

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Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Machine learning

• Hardware

  • Communication hardware, interfaces and storage

• Networks