Quality Windows Audio/Video Experience (qWAVE)

Quality Windows Audio/Video Experience (qWAVE) is the next generation Quality of Service (QOS) platform introduced in Windows Vista.

qWAVE provides new features focused on streaming multimedia and real-time content over variable bandwidth networks. These features include the following.

  • Auto-discovery of end-to-end QOS compatibility.
  • End-to-end bandwidth estimation of maximum link capacity (bottleneck bandwidth) and real-time available bandwidth.
  • Intelligent packet prioritization.
  • Congestion notification.
  • Flow shaping.
  • Distributed admission control, including caching to improve performance and minimize latency.