The BRAIN quality of service architecture for adaptable services with mobility support

Next generation IP networks and applications will have to address the increasingly important challenges of wireless access, mobility management, the provision of quality of service (QoS), and multimedia issues. These problems form the basis of the research within the EU financed BRAIN (Broadband Radio Access for IP based Networks) project. The project is developing a novel architecture that will be able to deal with the extreme QoS violations that are likely to occur during a running session that is exposed to the radio access environment. The core of this architecture supports different types of applications. It inherits and develops from the traditional Internet approach, but incorporates aspects of a modern flexible QoS middleware solution. The given problem is addressed in a comprehensive, modular, and open manner, by providing different APIs to different types of applications. It provides powerful functions to application programmers, but does not assume that lower level functionality must be hidden from the application programmer. It encompasses a variety of objects, APIs, end-system mechanisms and protocols to cope with the dynamic variation in mobility management and QoS. This solution will provide applications with more predictable services and allow applications to react in a pre-determined way to QoS violations