A QoS middleware for network adaptive applications

Multimedia applications introduce new requirements in terms of network resources. Applications need to be capable of specifying and requesting network resources. Many protocols for quality of service (QoS) provision exist. Rendering an application independent from the underlying network reservation protocol constitutes the major motivation for this paper. A QoS middleware is required that will provide a generalised interface for reservations and, at the same time, will take the role of an umbrella, under which a number of different reservation mechanisms can be placed. This paper presents a layered QoS middleware architecture and gives details of the specification and implementation of this architecture in terminals supporting IP and ATM-based applications.