Table of Contents 

1

INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................1 1

1.1

Web Delivered Services.........................................................................................1 1

1.2

Motivation .............................................................................................................1 1

1.2.1 The End User Perspective.................................................................................1 3 

1.3

Objectives ..............................................................................................................1 4

1.4

Technical Approach ..............................................................................................1 4

1.5

Overview of Dissertation.......................................................................................1 5

1.6

Summary................................................................................................................1 6

2

TECHNOLOGIES FOR END USER QOS..............................................................2 7

2.1

Introduction...........................................................................................................2 7

2.2

Quality of Service..................................................................................................2 7

2.2.1 What is Quality of Service ................................................................................2 7 

2.2.2 Why the need for QoS.......................................................................................2 7 

2.2.3 IP QoS ...............................................................................................................2 9 

2.2.4 Application Level QoS....................................................................................2 11 

2.3

Current Approaches to Service Management .....................................................2 14

2.4

Service Level Agreements ...................................................................................2 16

2.4.1 Overview of Service Level Agreements .........................................................2 16 

2.4.2 SLA Negotiation .............................................................................................2 17 

2.4.3 Items contained in an SLA..............................................................................2 18 

2.5

HTTP ...................................................................................................................2 19

2.5.1 Introduction to HTTP......................................................................................2 19 

2.5.2 XML................................................................................................................ 2 20