Integration of security parameters in the service level specification to improve QoS management of secure distributed multimedia services

This paper proposes to integrate security parameters into the service level specification (SLS). Integrating those parameters in the QoS part of the service level agreement (SLA) specification is essential in particular for secure multimedia services since the QoS is negotiated when the multimedia service is deployed. Security mechanisms need to be negotiated at that time when sensible multimedia information is exchanged. In this paper we show that including security parameters in the SLA specification improves the negotiation, deployment and use of the secure multimedia service. The parameters this paper proposes to integrate have the advantage to be understandable by both the end-users and service providers.