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This article presents a technology-agnostic and a multi-dimensional (i.e., routing, forwarding, and traffic management dimensions) approach for the management of IP network resources to ensure service differentiation with both intra- and inter-domain scope. This article introduces the network plane (NP) and parallel Internets (PI) concepts for achieving service differentiation. Based on these concepts, a functional architecture together with a business model is presented. In addition, this article describes how the proposed approach can become a promising platform for the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), with the objective of providing end-to-end QoS-enabled multimedia delivery across multiple providers to replace the flow-based reservation mode known as the VoIP resource reservation framework.

This article presents an architecture for supporting interdomain QoS across the multi-provider global Internet. While most research to date has focused on supporting QoS within a single administrative domain, mature solutions are not yet available for the provision of QoS across multiple domains administered by different organizations. The architecture described in this article encompasses the full set of functions required in the management (service and resource), control and data planes for the provision of end-to-end QoS-based IP connectivity services. We use the concept of QoS classes and show how these can be cascaded using service level specifications (SLSs) agreed between BGP peer domains to construct a defined end-to-end QoS. We illustrate the architecture by describing a typical operational scenario.