Congestion avoidance in multimedia networks

Multimedia traffic brings new challenges to the current networking technologies. The traffic generated by the multimedia applications comes with some constrains which are different than the traditional data traffic, such as: high bandwidth, low latency, multicast addressing. In order to provide qualitative services and to ensure the efficiency of resource consumption, a dynamic and flexible QoS (Quality of Service) is required. In the first part of this paper, as an origin for different QoS provision approaches, is performed a comparative analysis of two QoS based architectures: Integrated Services and Differentiated Services. In the second part of the paper there are presented the results of the QoS performance measurements performed on a test network based on Cisco routers (2600 series), in various scenarios.