Book Description

Providing Quality of Service (QoS) in the Internet is currently the most ch- lenging topic for researchers, industry and network providers. Now, the only available service in the Internet is the best e?ort service, which assumes tra?c is processed as quickly as possible, but there is no guarantee as to timely or actual delivery. On the other hand, there is pressure to o?er new applications in the Internet (like VoIP, videoconferencing, on-line games, e-commerce, etc. ) but this requires some packet transfer guarantees from the network (e. g. , low packet transfer delay, low packet losses). To meet these requirements, new architectures for providing IP- based QoS in the Internet are proposed: Integrated Services (IntServ) and Di?erentiated Services (Di?Serv). However, these architectures need some enhancements to provide adequate solutions for resource mana- ment, signaling, tra?c engineering, tra?c handling mechanisms, etc. In the European research community, a number of projects inside the Fifth Framework Programme were addressed solving the above issues; among these AQUILA (Adaptive Resource Control for QoS Using an IP-Based Layered - chitecture), CADENUS (Creation and Deployment of End-User Services in P- mium IP Networks), and TEQUILA (Tra?c Engineering for Quality of Service in the Internet at Large Scale) are excellent examples. The main achievements from these projects are the prototypes for ?xed QoS IP networks. The extension of these proposed solutions into the wireless environment is the next step.