The EuQoS System

Summary

The European research project “End-to-End Quality-of-Service support over heterogeneous networks” (EuQoS) defined a novel architecture that builds, uses and manages the end-to-end (e2e) application exchanges and network paths with Quality-of-Service (QoS) guarantees across different administrative domains and heterogeneous networks. This chapter presents the architecture of the EuQoS system as a case study of the concepts introduced in previous chapters. The EuQoS architecture provides a clear interface that allows the end user to request a specific QoS level, without changing its application signalling protocol and using the basic connectivity of the local service provider. A complete set of supporting functions was implemented: (i) Security, Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting (SAAA); (ii) Admission Control; (iii) Charging; (iv) Signalling and Service Negotiation; (v) Monitoring and Measurements Functions and System (MMF/MMS); (vi) QoS Routing (QoSR); (vii) Failure Management; and (viii) Traffic Engineering and Resource Optimisation (TERO). The EuQoS system was deployed as a prototype including all the above features, encompassing the most common access networks, i.e., xDSL, UMTS, WiFi and Ethernet, connected through a core network composed by the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) of the project partners and GÉANT (the European research network). This section describes the main features of the EuQoS system and presents the mechanisms, algorithms and protocols that were developed in the project. The results achieved validate the design choices of the EuQoS system, and confirm the potential impact that this project is likely to have in the near future.