QoS and Authentication Experiences in a Residential Environment Within a Broadband Access Framework

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