A protocol for QoS contract negotiation and its implementation using Web Services

The way Internet is used changes: demand grows for critical services that cross several provider networks; guaranteeing a required end-to-end quality of service (QoS) across several networks becomes a challenge. Some critical services (e.g. video-conference, VPN etc.) can not be satisfied in a best effort fashion. The use of QoS contracts (service level agreements, SLAs) is effective for management of such services. However, the problem of meeting end-to-end QoS requirement remains: no centralized entity can compute overall QoS for chains of contracts, and a fortiori, such contract chains can not be optimized centrally. Thus, the following problem has to be solved: given an end- to-end QoS request and collections of available SLAs on each participating domain, establish an end-to-end contract committing a chain of providers and giving optimal service under most reliable guarantees available.

1. Introduction

X-domain multimedia applications (e.g. Video on demand, voice over IP etc.) are becoming mainstream. The problem of guarantying and controlling the QoS required for such services is a challenge for multi-domain manage-ment: participating domains are in general heterogeneous, managed independently of one another, and require a maximum of privacy.