NetQoPE: A Middleware-based Network QoS Provisioning Engine for Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems

Developers of distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems face challenges in provisioning network quality of service (QoS) properties due to the presence of application flows that require a range of network-level QoS properties, as well as the complexity of specifying perflow network QoS requirements and mapping them to network QoS enforcement mechanisms. This paper describes a QoS-enabling component middleware framework called NetQoPE that addresses these challenges via a multi-stage approach that includes (1) a model-driven framework for declarative specification of per-flow network QoS requirements, (2) a network resource allocation and configuration framework that maps perflow network QoS requirements to platform-specific network QoS provisioning mechanisms, (3) a deployment and configuration framework for deploying system components with the appropriate network QoS settings on the platforms, and (4) a runtime framework that enforces the network QoS properties for DRE application flows. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of NetQoPE in the context of a representative DRE application in an IP network testbed that supports various types of network traffic. Our empirical results demonstrate that the capabilities provided by NetQoPE yield flexible, predictable, and efficient network QoS provisioning for DRE systems.