Quality of service and mobility in IP network

Abstract

Mobile services have a growing interest for the users. One can easily predict the success of this kind of services, in particular with the future networks of the 4th generation. So, mobile users will require a similar level of quality of service to that of the fixed users. In mobile networks, the mechanisms of security and Quality of Service (QoS) used in the fixed networks are not adapted. The mobility of the users poses problems of authentication and conservation of QoS during the handoffs. We are interested in the management of security and QoS for user's mobility. In this paper, we propose a solution for the management of QoS. We use a smart card to authenticate and contain QoS data. Our protocol presents a solution based on a soft handover mechanism for the micro and macro mobility. Our approach is based on a network management protocol by policies with COPS (Common Open Policy Services) standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force and a smart card to store QoS parameters of the user.