Although Quality of Service functionality has become a common feature of network hardware, configuration of QoS parameters
is done by hand. There is a critical need for an automated network reservation system to provide reliable
last mile networking for video, audio, and large data transfers. Security of all communications in the process of automating the network
configuration is vital. What makes this security problem difficult is the allocation of end-to-end network resources across
security realms and administrative domains.
This paper introduces a practical system that shows a design and implementation of Globus General-purpose Architecture for
Reservation and Allocation (GARA) services that offer automated network reservation services to users. The contributions of
this paper are twofold. First, we provide a fine-grained cross-domain authorization for GARA that leverages existing institutional
security and group services, with universal access for users. We identify and discuss issues involved. Second, we eliminate
the need for long term public key credentials and associated overheads that are required by other systems. We describe the
implementation of an easy and convenient Web interface for making reservation requests.