Quality of Service Management in Heterogeneous Networks

This paper presents an approach that aims to provide quality of services (QoS) over heterogeneous Internet domains. The goal is to install and to manage QoS inside each domain and to ensure it on the end to end data path. QoS is a key requirement representing a significant infrastructure upgrade for future networks. Our proposal relies on the multi-service, multi-technology model based on Bandwidth Broker, entity in charge of controlling a given domain. It introduces a concept able to provide QoS in a set of domains using an inter domain signaling protocol. This protocol is used to communicate between Bandwidth Brokers and is independent of the intra-domain routing protocol. Moreover it is independent of the underlying technology and imposes minimal constraints leaving a maximum degree of freedom for users and domains providers to implement specific internal solutions.