A border-friendly, non-overlay mechanism for inter-domain QoS support in the Internet

Many services provided over the Internet, like voice over IP and video on demand, increase the demand for assurances concerning the quality of the underlying network. A score of techniques for assurance of quality of service (QoS) have been devised for use within administrative domains. However, when paths cross the border of autonomous systems, assurance of end-to-end QoS remains an unsolved issue. Thereby the key challenge is the establishment of connection-oriented communication flows. We introduce a technique to establish ISO/OSI Layer 3 multi-domain communication paths. The proposed solution does not stress border-routers and is independent of domain-internal policies, while relying on the common forwarding mechanisms.