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In this paper we envisage the issue of quality of service (QoS) management for multimedia services as an end to end QoS discovery problem. With this perception as a basis, we designed and implemented a layered QoS management architecture which handles QoS from the user's perspective, as well as from the end system's and the network's perspective. The architecture is decomposed into three layers. First there is the QoS specification, presentation and parameterization layer at which an end user is able to specify his/her QoS requirements in a comprehensible and qualitative way, and at which these QoS requirements are translated into parameterized terminal capabilities. Secondly, there is the QoS matching and negotiation layer at which the parameterized QoS capabilities of different terminal end systems are marched and compared in order to search for a QoS equilibrium. Finally, there is the QoS implementation layer which implements the resolved QoS equilibrium in the network and in the terminals. This generic architecture, which allows a de-abstraction of user defined QoS, has been implemented in the context of a CORBA based TINA platform.