QUALITY OF SERVICE (QoS) NEGOTIATION PROCEDURE FOR MULTI-TRANSPORT PROTOCOL ACCESS FOR SUPPORTING MULTI-MEDIA APPLICATIONS WITH QoS ASSURANCE

摘要

The present invention relates to a method that provides Internet application software with guaranteed quality of service (QoS) when the transport network is capable of guaranteeing the QoS. In many cases, for example, IP over ATM, the QoS that the IP layer (103) furnishes to application (100) is only the QoS that any IP layer (103) can provide, even though there is underlying ATM protocol stack, which guarantees QoS. The present invention implements an additional protocol layer located between application layer (100) and TCP layer (102). From the point of application, the layer is viewed as just regular TCP stack because the new protocol layer provides the exact same service that TCP stack does to its application. In addition to the traditional function, the new protocol layer provides transport protocol selection, IP/ATM address resolution and mapping between port number and QoS profile. Additionally, the present invention can be used to extend the functionality of the existing TCP protocol stack, thereby extending the performance of the TCP stack well beyond its normal purpose.