QoS-aware distributed applications such as certain Multimedia and
Ubiquitous Computing applications can benefit greatly from the provision of QoS
guarantees from the underlying system and middleware infrastructure. They must
avoid execution glitches that could affect the user's perception of the
application output.
Most research in QoS support for distributed systems relates to three aspects of
QoS management: admission control, resource reservation, and scheduling.
However, in highly dynamic distributed environments, effective means for QoS
negotiation and re-negotiation are also essential.
We believe that mobile agents, due to its inherent flexibility and agility, can
play an important role in this scenario, specially during the application
adaptation process. We designed a mobile-agent-based infrastructure that
provides services such as resource monitoring, QoS brokering, and QoS
enforcement. Furthermore, our infrastructure offers a powerful mechanism for QoS
negotiation. Our goal is to unburden the application from the complex process of
QoS negotiation and reservation, thus reducing the complexity of building
QoS-aware distributed applications.