There is a growing synergy between well-established Service Providers (SP), Content Providers (CP), and Network Providers (NP), to propose new value-added services, and hence opening new markets to generate further revenues. Meanwhile, the explosive increasing amount of multimedia content to be offered in the Internet and the heterogeneity of the underlying networking technologies demand the provision of new QoS-enabled mechanisms and architecture to efficiently control, manage and monitor the networks. Quality of service monitoring is becoming crucial to SPs for providing quantified QoS-based services and service assurance and to NPs for managing network resources. This paper proposes a framework for large scale inter-domain QoS monitoring in heterogeneous networks including IP and DVB networks that has been developed in the IST-ENTHRONE project of European Commission. One of the main aims is actually to allow high cooperation between different providers while keeping intact the authority, confidentiality, and full control of each provider over its underlying resources. The proposed monitoring framework consists of a layered architecture with two signaling protocols namely an inter-domain monitoring signaling protocol (EQoS-RM), and an intra-domain active measurement signaling protocol (Emon). The proposed QoS monitoring system is service-driven in the sense that it aimed at providing in service verification of QoS performance guarantees for the services offered to the users by the providers. To achieve this, it uses both QoS probes that perform both active and passive monitoring at different levels of abstraction employing node and network wide measurements and application-level perceived quality meters for detecting quality degradation. As such, this framework specifies three types of QoS monitoring components operating at different levels: at network element or node, at network and at service levels. This proposed system also provides monitoring information to NPs in order to assist in managing the operational status of their networks. Design and implementation of the proposed QoS monitoring system is described in this paper. Some experimental assessments of this service-driven QoS monitoring system prove its functioning in terms of accuracy and responsiveness in providing the necessary results.
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