An ITU-T study group on quality of service (QoS) is...

a submission said. KDDI Corp. of Japan suggested certain changes. The ITU-T study group on future networks is starting new work on expanding a list of five levels of quality of service for traffic, a participant said. Traditional IP networks have been built around a principle that networks will operate on a best-efforts packet delivery, without “guarantees,” a draft version of the recommendation said. The best-efforts paradigm has been “spectacularly successful” in supporting non-real-time data applications such as email and file transfer, it said. The principle assigns the responsibility for detecting and correcting transmission problems to customer gear and higher-level protocols that require better network support, it said. The principle does not provide a reliable quality of user experience in interactive voice telephony and other demanding real-time applications when network bandwidth limitations appreciably increase jitter, delay or when packets get lost. These types of applications work best across networks that can deliver “better than best-efforts” performance for various characteristics, it said. The proposed recommendation is intended as a guide for regulators and network and service providers to meets QoS performance objectives, it said. The ITU website doesn’t indicate whether regulatory concerns will require approval through a more formal process.