Peter Hovell

Head of the Networks Research Centre

Recent History

Ran the IPv6 area in BT for a number of years, significant events were the development of the worlds most comprehensive IPv6 to IPv4 translator (ULTIMA) based on the NAT-PT technology, started in London one of the first IPv6 Internet Exchanges (UK6x) in the world, helped shape the European Commissions policy towards IPv6 by being on the EU IPv6 Task Force, contributed to many EU IPv6 projects (6INIT, 6WINIT, IPv6TF, 6LINK, Euro6IX) and with SmarTone^? did a grand IPv6/Mobile publicity demonstration in Hong Kong.

Joined the Networks Research Centre in 2003 and lead the Quality of Service area, in particular furthered technically the core QoS^? technology Pre Congestion Notification (PCN) and publicized the technology both internationally and inside BT. Became the Head of the Networks Research Centre in 2004 and continue to run the QoS^? area for a further year plus lead the Multi-Service theme. I continue to run the Multi-Service theme which has developed this year into a coordinated programme of work to investigate, develop and define a 10 to 15 year networking vision for BT.

Research & Technology Interests

Evolution of the Internet and ensuring things work fast and end to end:

Architectures
Optics in the access and core areas
Routers that are fast enough to keep pace with the optics
Quality of Service
Applications, Sensors, End Devices …
Reliability & Resilience
The balance between security, privacy and reachability
The economics of the Internet to ensure its continued evolution

Selected Publications

The Development of Broadband Signalling Platforms, Chris Shephard, Peter Hovell, Steve Boswell and John King (BT), in BTTJ Volume 16 Issue 2 (April 1998).
Abstract: Mao Zedong once said: "All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience." This paper describes the experiences gained through a range of development projects, all concerned with the design, development, demonstration and maintenance of real broadband signalling systems. The authors have participated in the development of a variety of systems offering broadband capabilities, all of which support some form of broadband signalling between the service user and the service provider. The process of designing and building such systems can provide invaluable insights into issues such as development methods, signalling performance, programming interface definitions, etc, none of which are apparent from purely paper-based studies or through the standards specification process.
This "coal-face" experience covers both collaborative as well as internal BT projects, with each system being subject to a wide variety of service requirements. In addition, the period of work covered by the developments described in the paper encompasses broadband signalling systems that on the one hand predate the published ITU-T standards on broadband ISDN systems and on the other include a comprehensive testbed supporting an interworking set of broadband signalling interfaces based on the appropriate signalling standards defined by both the ATM Forum as well as the ITU-T.
Guaranteed QoS^? synthesis - an example of a scalable core IP quality of service solution Peter Hovell, Bob Briscoe and Gabriele Corlianò (BT), in BTTJ Special Edition on IP Quality of Service, Volume 23 Issue 2, (Apr 2005)
Abstract: With the transition of services like IP telephony to be carried over IP networks there is the potential for catastrophic numbers of calls to fail whenever sufficient demand is focused on unpredictable points in the core IP network. This is well-known; Service differentiation helps but does not alleviate the problem - call admission control is required but seems expensive for the few occasions it is required. This paper describes a BT-developed experimental mechanism called guaranteed QoS^? synthesis (GQS) that performs call admission control for core IP networks for constant bit-rate streams (voice and video). The mechanism is primarily aimed at Internet services but it may be possible to extend it for VPN applications. The GQS mechanisms is economic to deploy and operate , and scales without any increase in complexity. It achieves these properties by keeping no flow state in the network and basing call admission decisions on the measured congestion across the network. The paper describes the high-level GQS architecture as well as some of the deployment issues and potential savings in the operational support area. How GQS enables the separation of the interconnect QoS^? and retail business models is also explained.