A Trial towards Unifying Control Protocols: COPS versus RADIUS/DIAMETER

International audienceNew needs in the wireless networking fields have solicited the design and standardization of new protocols. Among these needs our main interests in this paper is global control protocols that can be elaborated between different domains. More specifically, we consider protocols designed for QoS brokerage, AAA aspects and mobility. Since different communities have used these protocols each in its field, we can see that there has been some redundancy between functionalities. In addition, the design was different; we can find also some fine distinction between protocols. In this paper we propose a unified protocol in order to simplify the deployment of such functionalities. Our approach joins the IETF main concern on strongly avoiding the replication of protocols having the same roles