NetQoPE: A Model-driven Network QoS Provisioning Engine for Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems∗

This paper provides two contributions to the study of quality of service (QoS)-enabled middleware that supports the network QoS requirements of distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. First, we describe the design and implementation of NetQoPE, which is a model-driven component middleware framework that shields applications from the details of network QoS mechanisms by (1) speci-fying per-flow network QoS requirements, (2) performing resource allocation and validation decisions (such as ad-mission control), and (3) enforcing per-flow network QoS at runtime. Second, we evaluate the effort required and flexibility of using NetQoPE to provide network QoS assur-ance to end-to-end application flows. Our results demon-strate that NetQoPE can provide network-level differenti-ated performance to each application flow without modify-ing its programming model or source code, thereby provid-ing greater flexibility in leveraging network-layer mecha-nisms.