P906-GI

Project Information

What is this Project about

IP networks and in particular the Internet are becoming ever more widespread. Many services/applications with different requirements use these networks, but presently there are no global methodologies and tools for managing their Quality of Service (QoS). Moreover, it is not clear which QoS parameters to use for expressing QoS at the user level (QoS perceived) and how to correlate them to application parameters and network performance (NP) parameters. Finally, services/applications in these networks (including the Internet) are not presently charged on the basis of user QoS requirements and QoS offered by service/network providers.

Recent surveys, studies and conferences have shown that:

present technology makes implementation of QoS feasible;
the main costs involved in QoS provisioning is not implementing QoS but on maintaining it (signalling, routing, policy, accounting, billing etc.);
the number of QoS parameters should be minimised (because of the complexity of specifying them, monitoring them, enforcing them, etc).
services/applications should be characterised by a few Quality classes;

QoS is a key factor for differentiating service offers in a competitive market. However, measurement, management and charging of QoS is still not fully deployed and, above all, are not done in an integrated way.

What are the key results of this Project?

The main objectives of this Project are:

proposal of a QoS model (QUASI-model) that considers Quality Classes at the user level and network performance parameters at the network level;
execution of tests with some meaningful services/applications in order to find the correlations between Quality Classes and network performance parameters;
demonstrative implementation of the QUASI-model;
development of methodologies and tools, within the framework of the QUASI-model, for QoS management and measurement;
development of methodologies and tools, within the framework of the QUASI-model, for QoS charging;
experimental evaluation of the developed methodologies and tools for QoS measurement, management and charging;
provision of practical guidelines to shareholders for implementing the QUASI-model at their sites

The project will be limited to investigate: Single provider, human end-users and IP-based networks.

Note: The results of EURESCOM Projects P806 (EQoS) and P807 (JUPITER 2) will be used in order to avoid duplication of efforts and to strengthen the EURESCOM QoS effort.

Project Results

Deliverable Title	No	Planned issue date
Offering quality classes to end-users	D1
Methodologies and tools for QoS measurement and management Project Report	D2
Survey of existing methodologies and tools for QoS measurement and managemen Technical Information	TI1
Quasimodel Implementation Technical Information	TI2
Experimental evaluation of QoS measurement and managemen Technical Information	TI3
Methodologies and policies for QoS charging Project Report	D3
Key QoS Charging Issues Technical Information	TI4
Experimental evaluation of QoS charging Technical Information	TI5
Summary of QUASIMODO Findings on QoS Technical Information	TI6
Other publications: Presentations at QUTE'99 (A EURESCOM Workshop in Heidelberg 21 October 1999): Marco Alfano: P906 - QUASIMODO - a QoS model for end users (Read the abstract) Michael Smirnow: P906 QUASIMODO - Key QoS Charging Issues: operators perspective Paper presented at WTC/ISS 2000 in Birmingham, UK 8-12 May 2000. Marco Alfano, Michael Smirnow and Magnus Krampell "End to end quality in IP networks: can we offer and charge it?