An architecture for transparent end-to-end QoS-IP transport service provisioning

IP-QoS is mature enough, both in terms of standards and enabling tools (e.g. Control and Data Plane mechanisms), but automatic end-to-end QoS-IP services are still far away. In an ideal scenario, traffic flows from QoS-demanding applications transparently "ask" for a QoS network service using their own native signalling protocols (RSVP, H.323, SIP, etc.), with no need for special Control Plane enhancements. This article proposes a network and device architecture implementing this scenario, where the intelligence (and complexity) of the network, is moved to the UNI border, and the various access protocols are automatically translated into a "common language" for the selected network, QoS architecture. (IETF DiffServ model). The presented MultiAccess DiffServ Border Router (MADS BR) and the DiffServ Bandwidth Broker elements play the key roles with their modularity at the DiffServ UNI. The described architecture has been implemented and preliminarily tested in a network trial based on Linux platforms.