Quality of service: Introduction of a new framework and a novel measurement technique

Quality of Service (QoS) and Inter-domain traffic control are the current research topics in the fields of computer communication and IP Telephony in Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN) and Wi-Fi network. By appropriate design and implementation of QoS and traffic control in a corporate network a significant amount of bandwidth and thereby money can be saved. Performance and reliability are also enhanced in this process. In the current QoS framework emphasis has only been put on layer 2 and layer 3, using traffic classification, scheduling and provisioning. Also, there is no effective means of measuring an agency's QoS implementation level. In this paper we have proposed a new QoS framework which includes QoS at all 7 layers of OSI reference model. We have also introduced a new technique, Quality of Service Quotient (QoSQ) for measuring an agency's QoS posture. We have implemented QoS in a NSW government agency following this new QoS framework and have provided ‘bandwidth’ usage data for both pre and post QoS implementation. The data shows considerable subscribed bandwidth savings (55%) and increased average bandwidth usage (30%).