Affects of queuing mechanisms on RTP traffic: comparative analysis of jitter, end-to-end delay and packet loss

The idea of converging voice and data into a best-effort service network, such as the Internet, has rapidly developed the need to effectively define the mechanisms for achieving preferential handling of traffic. This sense of QoS assurance has increased due to the enormous growth of users accessing networks, different types of traffic competing for available bandwidth and multiple services running on the core network, defined by different protocols and vendors. VoIP traffic behaviour has become a crucial element of the intrinsic QoS mainly affected by jitter, latency and packet loss rates. This paper focuses on three different mechanisms, DropTail (FIFO), RED and DiffServ, and their effects on real-time voice traffic. Measurements of jitter, end-to-end delay and packet loss, based on simulation scenarios using the NS-2 network simulator are also presented and analyzed.