Quality of service issues in Internet Web services

A large fraction of Internet users access network resources through Web clients/browsers. The quality of service (QoS) experienced by their Internet users has gained great importance in recent years. Furthermore, new Web applications require the delivery of multimedia data in real time (e.g., streaming stored video and audio) and information transfer through the Internet is becoming one of the principal paradigms for business: electronic sales, banking, finance, collaborative work are a few examples of this. The QoS perceived by its users is thus becoming a dominant factor for the success of an Internet-based Web service. The principal QoS attributes users perceive include those related to the service "responsiveness", i.e., the service availability and timeliness