6QM - IPv6 QoS Measurement

The project 6QM is devoted to research and development of measurement technologies for Quality of Service in IPv6 networks. It will create a comprehensive system integrating the various required functions for QoS measusurement, such as packet capturing, precise time-stamping, data collection, QoS metrics derivation (delay, loss, jitter etc.) and result presentation.

In order to achieve this goal, requirements for QoS measurements in the future IPv6 networks are analyzed and a flexible architecture is proposed including local components for non-intrusive capturing of measurement data and server components collecting these information for further processing. Interfaces and suitable protocols are identified. The project will align with existing standard approaches, and will propose extensions and input to standardization in problem areas, where enhancements are still required.

The developed components will be integrated and locally tested. For gaining wider usage experiences and feedback, the 6QM project will set up cooperations with other IST projects working on IPv6 issues. In particular, there will be sought liaisons with the two pan-European native IPv6 networks (Euro6IX and 6NET), to serve as major test-beds for the validation of the 6QM system.

The liaison and the cooperation between 6QM and these projects will allow to study the impact of the characteristics of the IPv6 networks on the design of measurement tools (probes) and on the specification of the measures (metrics, collection techniques, processing methods).

As part of the expected result from 6QM project, a knowledge base and a set of guidelines will be created, that may be exploited by operators and ISPs to meet the client demand in IPv6 advanced services with guaranteed and differentiated QoS.