QoSockets: a new extension to the sockets API for end-to-end application QoS management

Distributed multimedia applications are sensitive to the quality of service (QoS) delivered by underlying communication networks. The main question this work addresses is how to adapt multimedia applications to the QoS delivered by the network and vice versa. We introduce QoSockets, an extension to the sockets mechanism to enable QoS reservation and management. QoSockets automatically generates the instrumentation to monitor QoS. It scrutinizes interactions among applications and transport protocols and collects in QoS management information bases (MIB) statistics on the QoS delivered. The main advantages of QoSockets are the following: (1) support of single API for transport-layer QoS negotiation, connection establishment, and data transmission; and of single API for OS QoS negotiation; (2) support of a single QoS negotiation protocol; (3) generality across application QoS needs; (4) automatic management of application QoS needs. QoSockets are available for Solaris and Linux and support RSVP, ATM adaptation, ST-II, TCP/UDP, and Unix native protocols.