Global mobility and QoS provision for Internet services: the SUITED solution

The need to extend the Internet services in the new environments characterized by nomadic users, such as travellers on wheels, on water or in the air, is becoming one of the major driving forces for research activity in the telecommunication area. Global mobility is more and more required by Internet users willing to access multimedia services regardless of their location. Moreover, the best effort quality of the services currently available over the Internet is now becoming unsatisfactory for several classes of users. SUITED, a project developed in the framework of the Information Societies Technology (IST) program funded by the European Union, intends to provide a solution to the growing needs of Internet users requiring to access multimedia applications irrespective of the location and with the desired QoS. It aims at contributing to the definition and deployment of the Global Mobile Broadband System (GMBS) by focusing, in particular, on its land mobile component. The SUITED approach is based on the integration of different kinds of networks-both satellite and mobile terrestrial-presenting mutually complementary features in order to create a multisegment access network for the Internet. This paper provides an overview of the SUITED/GMBS system. The main architectural features are described by highlighting how the different network components cooperate to form a global system. The approaches followed in designing the global mobility management and QoS support schemes are presented along with an example of procedure-i.e., the inter-segment handover-showing their strict interaction.