| Customer:
(subscriber) |
An
entity, which has the legal ability to subscribe to QoS-based
services offered by providers. |
| User: |
An
entity (human being or a process from a general perspective), which
has been named by a customer and appropriately identified
by a provider for actually requesting/accessing and using
the QoS-based services bought by the customer.
|
| IP
Network Provider:
(INP) |
A
provider offering QoS-based IP connectivity services, that
is services that provide reachability between hosts in the IP address
space. |
| Service
Provider: |
A
provider offering higher-level QoS-based services
encompassing both connectivity and informational aspects e.g. telephony,
content streaming services. |
| Physical
Connectivity Provider: |
A
provider offering physical (up to the link layer) connectivity
services between protocol-compatible equipment in determined locations.
|
| Reseller: |
An intermediary in offering the QoS-based services of providers
to customers. |
| Service:
|
(From
customer perspectives): A specific offering made by a provider,
which clearly and unambiguously describes what it offers and the
terms and conditions under which it could be used.
(From provider perspectives): A subset of the provider's
domain capabilities with a clear description of the whats and hows
regarding its use by customers or third parties in general. |
| Service
scope: |
Network
boundaries demarcating the guarantees of a service. |
| QoS-based
service:
(or QoS service) |
A
service that is believed to provide added value to customers
e.g. matching specific application and/or customer requirements. |
| Inter-domain
QoS: |
Refers to the level of network QoS guarantees for communications
that span several domains.
|
| Service
Level Agreement:
(SLA) |
SLAs
are established between customers and providers
and describe the characteristics of the service and the mutual responsibilities
of each party (customer, provider) for using/providing the service.
|
| Service
Level Specification:
(SLS) |
The technical characteristics of a given service in the context
of a SLA. The technical characteristics of a service refer
to network level provisioning aspects. |
| cSLS: |
A
SLS established between customers and providers.
|
| pSLS: |
A
SLS established between two providers. |
| Peering
providers: |
Providers who are interconnected; |
| Service-peering
providers: |
Providers between whom pSLSs have been established. |
| QoS-class:
(QC) |
A basic network-wide
QoS transfer capability of a provider domain. |
| QoS
transfer capability: |
A set of attribute-value pairs, where the attributes express various
packet transfer performance parameters such as one-way transit delay,
packet loss and inter-packet delay variation. |
| Local-QoS-class:
(l-QC) |
A basic network-wide QoS transfer capability that can be
provided by means employed in the provider domain itself. Evidently,
the domain boundaries appearing in the topological constraints of
an l-QC should belong to the boundaries of the provider domain. |
| Extended-QoS-class:
(e-QC) |
A
basic network-wide QoS transfer capability that can be provided
by means employed not only in the provider domain but also utilising
appropriate means in other (service-peering) provider domains.
In other words, an e-QC is provided by combining the QoS transfer
capabilities (QoS-classes) of the provider domain with
appropriate capabilities (QoS-classes, l-QC or e-QC)
of other provider domains. The domain boundaries appearing in the
topological constraints of an e-QC could be outside the boundaries
of the provider domain, thus extending the topological scope of the
QoS transfer capabilities of the provider domain. |
| Meta-QoS-Class: |
A
standardised set of qualitative QoS transfer capabilities
with the scope of a single provider domain, understood to meet common
application requirements. A Meta-QoS-Class is an abstract concept,
not a real l-QC implemented in a real network. Providers
may map the l-QCs they have engineered to meta-QoS-Classes
if they wish to support standardised QoS characteristics. |
| QC-mapping:
|
The
process by which a provider determines how extended-QoS-classes
(e-QCs) may be feasibly created by combinations of the domain's
own capabilities (local-QoS-classes: l-QCs) with the QoS-class
capabilities offered by other provider domains. |
|
QC-binding: |
A
QC-mapping for which a pSLS with a service-peering
provider has been established. |
|
QC-implementation: |
The
implementation of a QC-binding at the network layer within
a provider domain. |
|
q-BGP:
(QoS-enhanced BGP) |
An
enhanced BGP that takes into account QoS information it carries in
its messages as an input to its route selection process. |
