The Internet2 project is a partnership of over 130 U.S.
universities, 40 corporations, and 30 other organizations. Since its inception,
one of the primary technical objectives of Internet2 has been to engineer
scalable, interoperable, and administrable interdomain QoS to support an
evolving set of new advanced networked applications. Applications like distance
learning, remote instrument access and control, advanced scientific
visualization, and networked collaboratories will allow universities to fulfill
their research and education missions into the future, but only if the network
QoS these applications require can be ensured. To meet this challenge, the
Internet2 QBone initiative has brought together a dedicated group of U.S. University
and federal agency networks, international research networks, engineers,
researchers, and applications developers to build a testbed for interdomain IP
differentiated services. This article presents the engineering motivations
behind DiffServ and its adoption by Internet2, provides an overview of the
QBone architecture, and describes its anticipated deployment, including plans
for a trial inter-domain bandwidth brokering architecture. Security aspects are
considered togethered together with an inter-bandwidth broker reservation
signaling protocol.