A QoS distribution monitoring scheme for performance management of multimedia networks

To detect possible quality of service (QoS) degradation and locate the cause of the degradation, end-to-end QoS monitoring is not sufficient. Instead, QoS distribution should be monitored, i.e., the distribution of QoS experienced by a real-time flow in different network segments should be monitored. However, few of the current monitoring systems can provide QoS distribution monitoring. This paper presents an improved relevant monitor (IRM) based scheme for QoS distribution monitoring. With this scheme, when monitoring a real-time flow a network manager can locate relevant monitors that are metering the flow. By retrieving and consolidating traffic information from these monitors embedded in different network segments, not only the end-to-end QoS but also QoS distribution of the flow are derived. In addition, with this scheme, QoS distribution monitoring can be performed in multiple network management domains. In this paper, CORBA-based implementation for this scheme is also introduced to show its feasibility.