QoS and authentication experiences in a residential environment within a broadband access framework

Abstract

It is sometimes believed that a “broadband access” network, providing ample transmission capacity to residentia l environments, is enough so as to allow a flawless delivery of advanced service s. However, the provisioning of a combination of multiple services with guarante ed quality up to the end-user terminal requires a carefully designed architecture incorporating the appropriated Quality of Service (QoS) concepts thro ughout the data path. And this path includes the Residential Gateway (RGW) as the last hop towards the home network. This paper describes the different ex periences performed with the RGW prototype developed within the framework of the European IST research project MUSE. Special emphasis will be mad e on the QoS capabilities of the RGW as well as on authentication and auto-con figuration features