Services or infrastructure: why we need a network service model

The Internet approach to networking, with its clean separation between underlying network technologies and overlying applications provided by the internetworking layer, has been extremely successful. However, the single class of best-effort service offered by the current Internet architecture is unable to adequately support the service requirements of multimedia applications. We argue that, to remedy this, the Internet should adopt a more general service model; that is, the Internet should offer a variety of qualities of service. We present one proposal for a new Internet service model that contains two forms of real-time service and multiple levels of best-effort service. Interoperability between networks is possible only if the Internet and other internetworking approaches, as well as the various supporting subnet technologies, jointly converge on a common service model. Community networks, if they are seen as part of this general communications infrastructure, should join this search for a common service model. The crucial question, which remains largely unanswered, is whether these community networks, as currently envisioned by their sponsors, are merely means to deliver specific services or are part of a more general communications infrastructure