A user-centric QoS management approach for digital home

Modern home networking technologies provide great possibilities for distributing digital content throughout the home. However, media distribution is not ready yet to satisfy users' quality expectations, especially in wireless networks. That is why a number of Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms have to be deployed in the network in order to guarantee a certain level of quality. We propose a user-centric QoS management approach based on user preferences. Unlike traditional QoS approaches that always give multimedia applications a pre-determined high priority due to their strict latency and loss requirements, the proposed approach classifies traffic according to user preferences, thus, ensuring a certain quality regardless of the application requirements. The application priorities are assigned according to user profiles and automatically updated in case of changes in the network or user environment. The paper suggests that the introduced management approach will significantly contribute to the overall user experience in digital home.