Quality of Service Issues Associated with Internet Protocols

Abstract

The objective of enabling the development of higher-level multimedia services with guaranteed quality of service (QoS) on networks has prompted developments that attempt to accommodate these new application requirements. Several architectures have been proposed, and a common basic functionality is emerging. Any new architecture that intends to satisfy the ever-growing need for bandwidth in the Internet while providing support for QoS guarantees needs to concern itself with the following aspects (Zhang, Deering, Estrin, Shenker, Zappala, 1993; Biswas, Lazar, Huard, Lim, Mahjoub, Pau, Suzuki, Torstensson, Wang and Weinstein, 1998): • Flow management: identifying the traffic characteristics of a flow so that the network can specify the QoS to be delivered to that flow • Compatibility with a wide range of routing protocols (Callon, Doolan, Feldman, Fredette, Swallow, Viswanathan, 1997) • Resource reservation • Admission control • Packet scheduling: including packet filtering and classification.