In the past NASA has supported critical network applications by dedicating separate communications circuits for individual missions, a very expensive approach that results in networks that lie idle much of the time. QoS allows users to request special services, such as reserved bandwidth or maximum delay, in transmitting their information over a network. That is, QoS will allow designated applications to receive preferential treatment at the expense of lower priority applications when network resources are inadequate to satisfy all requests. Project Office hosted a QoS workshop at NASA Ames Research Center on August 18 and 19. Attendees included NREN partners from other government agencies, universities, industry and the Internet2 community, which is a collaborative effort by more than 120 U.S. universities to coordinate the development, deployment, operation and technology transfer of network services to support advanced applications.
Different applications require different levels of network service.
In other words, during periods of congestion, applications with QoS guarantees will receive preferential access to limited network resources. Development of technology for providing QoS guarantees across wide-area networks is currently a major research effort in the networking community. There was general agreement at the workshop that a better understanding of application QoS requirements is necessary to develop an effective QoS network infrastructure. NREN activities to implement NASA revolutionary applications will make a major contribution toward this effort. NREN anticipates continuing discussion and collaboration with its networking partners to address QoS challenges for the Next Generation Internet.