Managing multimedia traffic in IP integrated over differentiated services: SIP dynamic signalling inter-working

The current IETF standardization work has highlighted the feasibility of providing the users with a QoS network architecture in the framework of Integrated Services over Differentiated Services. In such a framework other works have highlighted the need of coordination between the access signalling protocols and the transport level resource reservation mechanisms. In this work we propose a general method and coordination of these transport level mechanisms between SIP entities and the QoS DiffServ architecture supposed to act as the interconnecting network. A re-defined version of COPS developed in our laboratories is used for authorization/resource allocation requesting; such protocol re-definition is optimized for managing the multimedia flows when requesting access to the DiffServ architecture so making able a SIP server to commit resources for the calls that it is managing. The procedures needed to establish the QoS call over a multi-domain DiffServ scenario will be discussed; the needed procedures are dynamically started at call set-up time avoiding the users from drafting unsatisfactory static Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The paper focus is about architectural considerations and proposal beyond the underlying architecture, design issues and implementation report and testing.