Existing network QoS models do not sufficiently reflect the challenges faced by high-throughput, alwayson, inelastic multimedia applications. In this paper, a utility-based QoS model is proposed as a user layer extension to existing communication QoS models to better assess the requirements of multimedia applications and manage the QoS provisioning of multimedia flows. Network impairment utility functions are derived from user experiments and combined to application utility functions to

more »

... the application quality. Simulation is used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed QoS model.