A quality of service (QoS) class indicator (QCI) structure is provided, wherein the QCI structure is arranged to control communication in a communication network and to classify data flows in the communication network, and wherein the QCI structure comprises: an identifier of a provider of an industry vertical and/or of a service in the communication network; and a QoS parameter set for the provider of the industry vertical and/or of the service. A QoS central controller is configured to manage QoS classes in the communication network according to the QCI structure. Each one of one or more QoS sub-network controllers is arranged to configure devices in a respective sub-network of the communication network according to the QCI structure.

Embodiments of the present invention disclose a network function instance management method, including: receiving a management request for a target network function instance, where the management request for the target network function instance carries an identifier of a target virtualized network function descriptor and an identifier of a first network function instance, and the identifier of the first network function instance is used to determine a connection between the target network function instance and the first network function instance; managing the target network function instance based on the management request for the target network function instance; and establishing the connection between the target network function instance and the first network function instance based on the identifier of the first network function instance. In addition, the embodiments of the present invention further disclose a network function instance management apparatus and device.

The present disclosure is directed to a multi-level resource reservation system that obviates one or more of the problems due to limitations and disadvantages of the related art. The multi-level resource reservation system creates, or modifies existing, peer-to-peer protocol(s) to complete a continuous chain of configured ports to support QoS feature(s), e.g., bound latency and guaranteed jitter, for a data flow that traverses an arbitrary sequence of bridges, routers, and virtual links.

Aspects of the disclosure provide an electronic apparatus and a method for wireless communication. The electronic apparatus can include processing circuitry. The processing circuitry can send one or more packet data unit (PDU) session release requests to a wireless communication network system to request a PDU session release procedure. In an embodiment, a timer is used for the one or more PDU session release requests. The processing circuitry can determine whether a network response is received from the wireless communication network system before the timer expires and whether a number of times that the timer expires reaches a predetermined number of times. The processing circuitry can locally release the PDU session when the network response is not received and the number of times that the timer expires reaches the predefined number of times.

A communication node of a multi-node communication network may include a communication interface and a controller communicatively coupled to the communication interface. The controller may be configured to: transmit one or more data packets over an in-use channel to one or more additional communication nodes of the multi-node communication network; determine an in-use channel quality indicator (CQI) value (CQI.sub.in-use) of the in-use channel; determine a self-degradation value (SDV) indicative of channel quality degradation attributable to the multi-node communication network; determine a candidate CQI value (CQI.sub.candidate) of an identified candidate channel different from the in-use channel; determine a first CQI difference value (CQI.sub.1diff); transmit one or more data packets over the in-use channel if CQI.sub.1diff does not exceed a CQI threshold value (CQI.sub.thresh); and transmit one or more data packets over the candidate channel if CQI.sub.1diff exceeds CQI.sub.thresh.

A method for optimizing group communication services, the method including determining a current location and an assigned home server for one or more devices associated with each of a plurality of group members, determining whether the one or more devices of the plurality of group members has moved to a visiting location, wherein the visiting location is a location outside of locations associated with the assigned home server based on the current location and assigned home server for the one or more devices, and assigning a group control application server associated with the visiting location to the to the one or more devices to serve as the assigned home server.

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a management method, and a management device and a system that are based on the method. The method includes: sending, by a second management device, an update request to a first management device, where the update request is used to request the first management device to update requirement information of a subnet managed by the first management device; and then, determining, by the first management device, that the subnet can satisfy the update request, or determining that the subnet cannot satisfy the update request. In the solutions in the embodiments of the present disclosure, the second management device can request the first management device to update the requirement information of the subnet managed by the first management device, thereby preventing a management fault of an entire network slice when a subnet managed by the second management device cannot satisfy a preset requirement.

Methods and systems for providing quality of service over IP networks are disclosed. In one aspect, a flow label field of a header may be divided into first and second portions. The first portion defines a quality of service. The second portion identifies a message flow. Once the first portion defining the quality of service is established by the sending node, no nodes in the transmission path may change the quality of service value. Each node may route packets based on the quality of service field, or may modify the traffic class field of the header based on the quality of service and then route the packet based on the traffic class field. The QoS field can be used to complement a DSCP/traffic class field and provide a better mechanism for end-to-end QoS using IPv6. A service provider can use DSCP within its own administrative domain(s), and end users can set and maintain QoS using the methods described herein, thereby providing a framework for end-to-end QoS using IP packets.

Techniques described in this disclosure are directed to a co-location facility provider generating an inter-metropolitan area service chain for application of a plurality of services offered by cloud service providers located in geographically distributed metropolitan areas. In some examples, a method includes receiving, by a controller executing at a computing device of a co-location facilities provider, a request for a plurality of services to be applied to data of a customer; in response to receiving the request, generating, by the controller, a service chain for application of each of the plurality of services provided by a different one of a plurality of cloud service providers, wherein the services are applied by each of the plurality of cloud service providers at co-location facilities in geographically distributed metropolitan areas; and providing, by the controller and to the customer, the service chain for application of the plurality of services.

Some of examples disclosed herein relate to classifying access points (APs). Some of the example may enable automatically classifying a set of APs based on at least one AP attribute of each AP in the set of APs, determining, based on the automatic classification, that a subset of APs in the set of APs are classified into a same class; and automatically determining a recommended configuration setting for the subset of APs.