% $Id: abstract.tex 4523 2006-11-29 04:06:54Z gokhale $

\subsection*{Abstract}

Standards-based quality of service (QoS)-enabled component middleware
is increasingly used as a platform for network-centric, distributed,
real-time and embedded (DRE) systems where applications require
ensured network QoS even when network resources are scarce or
congestion is present. Traditional approaches to building
network-based, QoS-sensitive applications, such as Internet telephony
and streaming multimedia applications, have relied on leveraging
low-level proprietary command line interfaces  such as CISCO IOS
and/or low-level management interfaces such as SNMP.
Although QoS-enabled component middleware offers many desirable
features, until recently it has lacked the ability to simplify and
coordinate application-level services to leverage advances in
end-to-end network QoS management.

Our work models and provisions network QoS in QoS-enabled component
middleware for DRE systems, extending our previous
work that predominantly used host resources to provision
end-system QoS. By integrating a Bandwidth Broker (BB) that
provides network QoS into our DRE middleware, we enable end-to-end QoS
assurance. We describe a declarative QoS provisioning solution called
NetQoPE.  Its modeling capabilities allow a user to specify
application QoS requirements in terms of network and computational
needs.  The model, in turn, leads to deployment decisions that take
into account network  resources (in addition to host
resources). Finally, our DRE middleware provisions network and
middleware elements to enable and enforce QoS decisions.

We demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of NetQoPE in the
context of a representative DRE system -- a modern enterprise
environment with  a single Layer-3/Layer-2 network that supports
different types of traffic.   Our empirical results show that the
capabilities provided by NetQoPE yield a predictable and efficient
system for QoS sensitive applications even in the face of changing
workloads and resource availability in the underlying network
subsystem.
