RSVP
Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) is a protocol that provides
a mechanism to reserve resources in support of Integrated Services.
The z/OS® UNIX RSVP agent provides the following services
on behalf of applications that want to use Integrated Services:
- An RSVP API (RAPI) that allows applications to explicitly request RSVP services. Using RAPI, applications indicate their intent to send or receive data, describe the characteristics of the data traffic and request that RSVP reserve resources along the data path to provide a given QoS to one or more traffic flows. For more information about RAPI, see z/OS Communications Server: IP Programmer's Guide and Reference.
- Mapping of IP ToS settings to RSVP traffic, using policies defined for RSVP.
- Support for VIPA addresses as well as real IP addresses.
- Communication with other RSVP agents on hosts and routers in the network to communicate application resource reservation requests.
Network administrators can use the z/OS UNIX Policy Agent to define RSVP-specific policies. These policies can be used to limit the parameters of application-requested resource reservations, provide ToS mappings for RSVP traffic, and limit the number of traffic flows that can use RSVP services simultaneously.
RSVP is designed to be implemented on both end systems (hosts) and routers. Different functions are provided by RSVP in these two environments. The z/OS RSVP agent is supported as a host RSVP implementation only. It can communicate with router RSVP implementations, but is not itself supported as such. For more information about RSVP, see RFC 2205.