A Framework-Based Approach to the Development of Network-Aware Applications

Modern networks provide a QoS (quality of service) model to go beyond best-effort services, but current QoS models are oriented towards low-level network parameters (e.g., bandwidth, latency, jitter). Application developers, on the other hand, are interested in quality models that are meaningful to the end-user and therefore struggle to bridge the gap between network and application QoS models. Examples of application quality models are response time, predictability, or a budget (for transmission costs). Applications that can deal with changes in the network environment are called network-aware. A network-aware application attempts to adjust its resource demands in response to network performance variations. This paper presents a framework-based approach to the construction of networkaware programs. At the core of the framework is a feedback loop that controls the adjustment of the application to network properties. The framework provides the skeleton to address two fundamental challe..