Analysis of Methods for Controlling QOS Agreements Among IP Mobile Networks

Future mobile services are expected to have different levels of QoS requirements, raising the need to enhance networks with the capacity to differentiate among different classes of traffic, which may use different QoS models. To support and shelter different QoS models, future mobile networks should make use of an inter-network mechanism allowing the establishment of bi-lateral service level specifications (SLSs), without making any assumption about the signalling supported by internal network devices. Hence, this paper aims to explore the best way to use bi-lateral signalling to build end-to-end chains of SLSs. Two methods are evaluated. In the first one, control messages are only propagated after the establishment of an SLS between a pair of networks; in the second one control messages flow from the provider of the SLS to each of its customers, passing a chain of transit-networks.