Quality of service management for non-guaranteed networks

Abstract

The increasing dominance of multimedia communication posed new requirements for the underlying systems. Multimedia data, formally called continuous media, has time constraints that impose real time limitations for their transmission. Certain levels of service, called Quality of Service (QoS), need to be considered when handling continuous media. The present work utilizes QoS concepts for networks that do not have inherent QoS support. The thesis aims at verifying the possibility of having QoS-controlled communication on non-guaranteed networks. A basic QoS architecture is designed where already existing QoS concepts are adapted to work with non-guaranteed networks. The architecture provides the facilities of QoS specification, mapping, admission, maintenance, monitoring and notification. In addition, a new concept for predictive QoS admission is introduced. The proposed architecture was verified using a prototype system. The results showed an increased percentage of continuous media that arrive on time to their receivers (good put) with higher network loads. The increased good put was at the expense of high network overhead