Multimedia traffic control in integrated wired/wireless IP networks

With the increasing deployment of wireless LANs that are connected to wired IP networks, it has become imperative to consider end-to-end QoS solutions that effectively function across their boundaries. This is even more pronounced for multimedia applications and QoS-sensitive transport of their traffic. They are enabled by the access bandwidth available with IEEE 802.11b and 802.11a WLANs. Scalable QoS control in wired networks is a challenging problem on its own; wireless access and mobility amplify the problem. Our current work advances an integrated solution for QoS support of mobile multimedia applications for wired/wireless networks. We build on our work in scalable QoS control for wired IP networks (see Chen, S. and Park, K., Proc. IEEE INFOCOM ´99, p.864-72, 1999; Ren, H. and Park, K., Proc. IEEE/IFIP IWQoS, p.211-20, 2000), and extend it to encompass mobile wireless access via WLANs. The aim of this overview is to share our experience of building an integrated state-of-the-art wired/wireless IP network populated by QoS-enabled applications, which is based on the IP-centric scalable QoS architecture, Q-Bahn. The unexpected rise of WLANs is changing the networking landscape, perhaps a new beginning for wireless/mobile networking.