Inter-Domain QoS Provisioning and Accounting

QoS[QOS]-capable communication network devices are now available, such as IP routers and switches, thus enabling the implementation of QoS-guaranteed services. Policy-Based Network Management (PBNM) is a framework to control these network devices with management rules that are called "Policy". At present, most network engineers on PBNM cope with only intradomain QoS-guaranteed services, but an enhanced framework for interdomain QoS-guaranteed services is required for real commercial networks that communicate with networks managed with a different policy. On real commercial networks, service providers have to charge customers for the interdomain QoS-guaranteed services. We focus on interdomain QoS provisioning and accounting. First, we discuss the policy framework and its architecture. Based on this framework and architecture, we propose two protocols: a Policy Advertisement Protocol (PAP) that distributes local policies among domains, and a Policy Negotiation and Notification Protocol (PNP) that sets up a QoS-guaranteed communication path among domains[INTD]. Our experimental network confirms that this interdomain QoS provisioning is effective when service providers provide interdomain QoS services from the point of view of network administrator’s tasks, performance, and network traffic.