A solution based on terminal capability negotiation is proposed for the previously undefined QoS negotiation mechanism in the TINA architecture. Capability negotiation provides a means to select suitable media codecs as well as session protocols and network termination points for each terminal involved in a particular communication session. A hierarchy of QoS contexts is proposed to provide grouping of related QoS parameters. Terminal based QoS parameter mapping between the contexts isolates technology specific details to be recognized only where the technology itself is supported. The main result of this work is that by integrating the QoS mapping with the multimedia protocol profile negotiation and actual set-up of the communication, there is no need for generalized transport level QoS descriptions within the network architecture. The focus of this work is on the Network Resource Architecture, but Service Architecture issues are also briefly discussed in the context of an example scenario.
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