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Over the course of the last few decades, Internet has evolved to form a major technological component in our society. Accompanying this exponential growth are many challenges embracing both users expectations and ambitions of network providers. Internet Protocol (IP) is continuously being extended from the native Internet towards ubiquitous packet delivery models for the next generation of cellular networks. The two families of networks with their means of access, technologies and architectures are converging. The mutable access network structures, deployment practicalities and global traffic increase, necessitate advancements of packet delivery models. Evolution of the cellular network architectures introduces the flat-IP structure and novel topological arrangements in the backhaul. A flexible routing within an efficient Traffic Engineering (TE) is needed for novel random all-IP access network topologies with heterogeneous wireless accesses. These requirements converge with the conventional IP intra-domain routing concepts. Multi-Plane Routing (MPR) is a TE approach comprised of offline and online features tailored for all-IP access networks. Diversity is leveraged upon via multiple paths between traffic sources and destinations rendered by slicing the physical topology into multiple logical routing planes. Performance is enhanced utilising the entire topology while minimising the MPR-incurred protocol overhead. In this thesis, MPR extensions reflecting the evolution of access networks and emerging traffic types are studied. Minimum Set Cover (MSC) mathematical approach for random graphs representations of IP access network is applied accommodating novel features in offline TE: capacity planning/projections in conjunction with path correlations. Initially, a MPR utilization of the whole topology is validated via extensive simulations for diverse models of IP packet delivery improving upon key performance criteria and supporting meshing. The study proceeds to broader cases of random topologies of different sizes and sparseness where MSC-approach proves as superior by managing such complex routing resources. Additionally, Quality of Service (QoS) is tested for many traffic types including the Tactile traffic with its stringent requirements.

The Internet has proven to be a major contributor to the world and has had a significant impact on many aspects of our lives over the past decades. It continues to have the potential to impact societies, businesses and governments in different ways. Despite the clear significance of Internet as a key enabler of a big technological revolution, there are rising challenges associated with the exponential growth of the Internet. In addition, accelerated in part by the massive increase in devices and the capabilities of those devices, Internet traffic is increasingly becoming more dynamic and demanding. Meanwhile, users expect a quality delivery facilitated by service providers across the mobile networks from core to access. Internet Protocol (IP) as the underlying foundation for the next-generation networks is becoming increasingly relevant considering the ubiquitous installed IP infrastructure. Correspondingly, different suggestions are being explored about the facilitation of next-generation access networks via IP mechanisms, with a growing trend towards a flat IP structure and novel topological set-ups in the backhaul. With the expected surge in global IP traffic, service providers would need to adapt accordingly to operate disruption and loss free networks supported with the developing IP infrastructure. This calls for a consistent routing optimization strategy to minimize loss in data transmission. Hence, a resilient, efficient and easily implementable routing paradigm that employs suitable Traffic Engineering (TE) techniques aligned with the developing nature of future access networks must be applied. It becomes imperative that the routing considerations for IP access networks converge with the ones found in conventional intra-domain routing. Multi-Plane Routing (MPR) is a routing optimization approach that consolidates various aspects in an all-IP access network infrastructure and consists of both offline and online TE approaches. MPR integrates the recent multi-topology approach that leverages multiple alternative paths (for each Ingress-Egress pair) through a network that divides the physical network topology into several logical routing planes facilitating path diversity. In this thesis, MPR is extended from a practical prospective in line with the architectural evolution of access networks and the introduction of new traffic types and applications. The offline and online TE strategies of MPR have been modified to suit the flattened network architecture. Correspondingly, a MPR-based TE approach is proposed considering two different scenarios to reflect the evolution in the architectural design of access network structures under a realistic traffic scenario. It becomes evident that for ranges of topologies, MPR’s utilization of the whole topology in building path diversity in networks, allows for significant improvement of networks’ capacity, performance and support for meshing. Moreover, with the rise of different traffic types of various nature, Quality of Service (QoS) is increasingly becoming important. Tactile Internet is considered in this thesis in addition to other traffic applications. To this end, a novel routing technique which accommodates for the strict requirements of this new traffic type in access networks architectures will be proposed. Validation of the proposed techniques through simulations have been performed and presented, illustrating the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

The proliferation of mobile devices over the past several years has created a whole new world of the Internet. The deluge of applications for every aspect of today’s life has raised the expectation of having ubiquitous connectivity, with a desired Quality of Service (QoS). Although appealing, it has violated the original Internet design which was not intended to support mobility, neither better than best-effort delivery. It is also a well-known fact that technology is an ever-advancing need of the human society, and undeniably the Internet forms a major part of our lives now. Everyday more and more users flood the Internet with enormous amount of data and information. As such there is a need to effectively handle all the information and traffic in a way that there is an availability of high speed network routing without any loss in data transmission. QoS provisioning has been one of the long lasting focuses in the network research community. While designed for fixed networks, the use of QoS protocols in IP-based mobile networks, where hosts dynamically change their point of attachments, imposes new challenges to be studied and analysed. Furthermore, a massive growth in the access network traffic with its highly unpredictable nature can cause bottlenecks in some links while others are under-utilised, rendering the load skewed, and therefore, breaching the QoS provisioning commitments. The main objective of this research is to propose a novel QoS mechanism for mobile networks. The new scheme is composed of two different approaches accountable for QoS provisioning in next-generation access networks. Firstly, a new method is proposed that minimises the signalling overhead, as well as the interruption in QoS at the time of handover. Through a developed analytical framework and simulation scenario, the performance of the new scheme is investigated thoroughly, with the focus on the figures of merit that affect the efficiency of using QoS signalling protocols in access networks. Secondly, a new QoS-aware routing mechanism is proposed, based on the OSPF protocol, intending to minimise the congestion on the links while at the same time complying with traffic requirements. OSPF was created for providing flexibility and great scalability, and although widely used today, does not allow arbitrary splitting of traffic. This research delves into the study and development of IP-based networking, built upon an extension to OSPF routing protocol, that will foster integrated functioning of technologies that currently lead the vision for the novel telecommunication infrastructures and service provision. This novel QoS-aware approach, Multi-Plane Routing (MPR), is applied in the context of access networks for IP routing. MPR divides the physical network into several logical routing planes, each being associated with a dedicated link weight configuration. Network topology and node degree distribution directly impact the performance of our strategy. The foundation of this research’s vision for networking in future networks is in the evolution and derivatives of IP routing that are inherited from the native Internet and stand as the solution for networking in the sought "all-IP" integrated modern telecommunications infrastructures. MPR is proposed to offer a traffic engineering solution for future all-IP access networks that uses QoS-awareness and policies for plane selection to maximise path diversity, increase overall throughput and satisfy QoS requirements for sessions.