A Super-Peer based Method to Discover QoS Enhanced Alternate Paths

In the next generation Internet, the network should not only be considered as a communication medium, but also as an endless source of services available to the end-systems. These services (i.e. overlay applications) would be composed of multiple cooperative distributed software elements that dynamically build an ad hoc communication mesh (i.e. an overlay association). In a previous contribution, we proposed a collaborative distributed method to provide enhanced QoS between end-points within an overlay association. It aimed at discovering and utilizing composite alternate end-to-end paths that experience better QoS than the path given by the default IP routing mechanisms. Extending this work, this paper presents our investigations on an unstructured super-peer network-based method to discover such QoS enhanced alternate path