User centric QoS policy management for heterogeneous Internet environment
This document presents a framework for user-centric Quality of Service (QoS) management in heterogeneous Internet environments (considering fixed, mobile and broadcast networks). The framework is based on dynamic business level QoS policy specification by different actors (such as users, operators and administrators), as well as hierarchical policy refinement and translation, supporting the automated configuration of QoS mechanisms at heterogeneous network and transport entities. The hierarchical policy approach involves abstractions and mapping of policies described at business, unified, operational and configuration level considering networks with different capabilities and QoS requirements of different actors. The policy specification is dependent on the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) of the particular actors. This allows controlled and restricted usage of the network resources by the actors according to the actor dependencies and corresponding SLA rules. The policy management framework includes components for dynamic actor-based QoS policy specification, policy consistency check and dependency analysis regarding SLAs, automated policy provisioning and configuration at heterogeneous transport and network entities, policy monitoring and performance assessment, as well as automated adaptation of QoS mechanisms at operational level. Policy enforcement combined with policy monitoring and performance assessment is considered, as well as automated adaptation of policy parameters (e.g. operational policies) based on policy performance analysis. Interactions of components for policy specification and automated provisioning are based on policy repository storing the unified (intermediate) policy representations describing policy parameters, conditions and actions.