QoS adaptation in inter-domain services

QoS adaptation is an important process in inter-domain service management, since it can guarantee the correct service provisioning when unexpected events occur. However, in inter-domain environments, the human interference and the manual-based operations hamper the deployment of expeditious mechanisms to adapt the QoS of the services. This paper presents an approach based on SOA principles to perform QoS adaptation in these environments. This approach allows providers to determine the new QoS parameters, renegotiate these parameters with other providers along the provisioning path, update their contracts and enforce the changes in the equipment configuration in an automatic and on-demand fashion. The QoS adaptation process can be caused by technical (QoS violations, infrastructure malfunctions) or business (financial problems) issues. In addition, if a provider configuration in the provisioning path already supports the new requirements, this provider is not affected by the adaptation, thus decreasing the processing time.