Provisioning of QoS enabled inter-domain services

Provisioning quality-enhanced services across IP networks is in the focus of intensive research. However, the lack of an inter-domain management concept still hinders the deployment of Internet-wide end-to-end QoS. This paper introduces a management architecture that considers Internet as a set of inter-connected autonomous domains, where carriers offer and request inter-domain services. We propose mechanisms for delivering service descriptions in order to gather information about available QoS parameters before actually purchasing the service. Methods for propagation of traffic predictions towards their destinations are also defined. Several metrics characterising an inter-domain management architecture are introduced, and the proposed architecture is evaluated in terms of scalability and accuracy by simulations. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.