A QoS Gateway Architecture in Enabling the First Mile for QoS-Dependent Applications and Appliances

We present the design of a two-tier architecture, called a Quality-of-Service (QoS) Gateway, that (i) acts as an interface between application QoS requirements and network-provided QoS capabilities, and (ii) supports small embedded network devices that rely on network-provided QoS support. The QoS Gateway will promote wide QoS deployment and facilitate construction of QoS-aware access networks. It also provides QoS-based protection for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) services and applications located in customer networks through incoming traf-fic control and Adaptive Packet Filters (APFs). The QoS Gateway is composed of two key components: (1) an agent that resides close to end-hosts and provides an adequate interface for QoS-dependent applications, and (2) a QoS manager that provides an interface to network services for the agents. Using these two components enhances generality and scalability in providing QoS support for Internet applications and end-devices. We realize the main functionality of the architecture as Linux-based software prototype, and we also plan to use network processors available in the market to realize the performance-critical and complex functionality of the QoS Gateway and address the research issues associated with this implementation. The flexibility, programma-bility, and ability of network processors architecture to handle high-throughput data plane make them ideally suitable for implementing efficient QoS gateways