Socket-masking and SNMP: a hybrid approach for QoS monitoring in mobile computing environments

Concomitantly to the extraordinary growth of the multimedia applications, a great development in the field of mobile communications took place, the union of these areas provided a whole new set of fascinating services to end-users. However, the multimedia traffic tends to emphasize the wireless network´s limitations making it necessary for the development of applications that are able to adapt themselves to the network changes. This paper proposes a monitoring system for quality of service parameters in these networks, so that the applications can constantly verify the connection status and take adaptation measures if needed. The implemented monitor tries to be accurate and light because an increase in the network resource utilization only for monitoring purposes would account for an even heavier degradation in the quality provided to the user. After the presentation of a survey on the subject, the paper introduces the monitoring system, its usage and a case study evaluating its functionality.