AQUILA: adaptive resource control for QoS using an IP-based layered architecture

Support for quality of service is an essential component of the next-generation Internet. The European research project AQUILA is committed to defining a DiffServ-based architecture for delivering on-demand QoS to requesting applications. Focal characteristics of the proposed solution are backward compatibility to the existing Internet and scalability to very large networks. To achieve such goals, AQUILA implements an overlaid distributed control layer, the Resource Control Layer, implementing a novel mechanism for dynamic control of intradomain resources, the Dynamic Resource Pool. On the interdomain aspects, the AQUILA architecture extends the BGRP framework for the aggregation of interdomain reservations to overcome scalability issues. This article describes the general AQUILA architecture, with a special focus on the DRP and BGRP mechanisms.