Quality Windows Audio-Video Experience - qWave

Download Quality Windows Audio-Video Experience - qWave qWave.doc 167 KB Microsoft Word file Updated: Apr 30, 2004 Get Office File Viewers

This document provides information about Quality of Service (QoS) support for audio-video (A/V) scenarios on home IP networks for Windows Vista. It describes the Quality Windows Audio/Video Experience (qWave) framework and provides guidelines for independent hardware vendors (IHVs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop solutions that support this framework.

For the purposes of this document, QoS refers to the mechanisms used to provide a desired level of network service to an application on IP-based networks. The network service parameters may include bandwidth, jitter, latency, and packet loss. The desired level of network service can be achieved by explicitly reserving bandwidth on the network or by providing preferential service to selected network traffic while providing best-effort service to all other traffic.

The focus of this document is QoS for traffic that travels within the home. In particular, this document describes QoS for A/V streaming traffic that competes with other data and best-effort traffic and QoS for wireless (Wi-Fi) home networks. Windows Vista will provide a QoS solution, codenamed Quality Windows Audio Video Experience (qWave), to support home network scenarios such as these.

This information applies to the following operating systems:
The next version of Microsoft Windows Vista

Included in this white paper:

Top of page