QoS monitoring framework for end-to-end service management in wired and wireless networks

The explosive increasing amount of multimedia content to be offered in the Internet and the heterogeneity of the underlying networking technologies demand the provision of new QoS-enabled mechanisms and architecture to efficiently control, manage and monitor the networks. This paper first briefly introduces a complex system for multimedia content generation, transport and consumption, over heterogeneous network environment. This is developed in ENTHRONE I and II projects, where a central concept and subsystem is the ENTHRONE integrated management supervisor (EIMS). Then, the focus of the paper is to present a novel service oriented monitoring framework as an essential part of the EIMS. The proposed QoS monitoring system aims at providing service performance verification with respect to the QoS guarantees specified in contractual agreements between providers and users. This is achieved by not only monitoring services inside wired and wireless access/core networks but also at the customer side. The presented system also provides monitoring information to service providers for providing quantified QoS-based services and service assurance and to network providers for managing network resources.