Providing Quality of Service across multiple providers: The case of European research and academic space

In this chapter, we present some of the latest developments related to the provisioning of Quality of Service (QoS) in today’s networks and the associated network management structures that are or will be deployed to support them. We first give a brief overview of the most important Quality of Service proposals in the areas of Layer 2 (L2) and Layer 3 (L3) QoS provisioning in backbone networks, and we discuss the network management structures and brokers that have been proposed in order to implement these services. As a case study, we describe the pan-european research and academic network, which is supported centrally by GEANT and which encompasses multiple independent NRENs (National Research and Education Networks). In the last few years, GEANT has developed and deployed a number of production and pilot services meant for the delivery of quality network services to the end users across Europe.