Using application feedback in differentiated services and policies

Quality of service (QoS) requirements refer to non-functional, run-time requirements such as performance. Different applications have different QoS requirements and hence different resource needs. Differentiated services (DiffServ) from the IETF allows the network to treat IP packets differently based on a service class. The paper describes a policy-based QoS management system that allows for a change in the treatment of packets from a specific flow using DiffServ. The decision to change is based on a number of things, including the monitoring of the application's behavior (referred to as application feedback). Corrective actions include changing the service class and/or target bandwidth. The paper provides a description of the policy-based QoS management system used and experimental results.