QoS restoration, a new approach to keep QoS of end-to-end ATM connections for failures is proposed. In a network with QoS restoration, each end-to-end connection's customer pre-defines the minimum QoS requirements such as minimum throughput. When a failure occurs, resources such as bandwidth of working connections are reallocated for restoration if they are dispensable to keep the minimum requirements along with the pre-assigned spare resources. This resource reallocation is done in a distributed manner and the result of the modification of a connection is notified to the customer of the connection to help him adjust the way of using it. The effect of the reallocation is mathematically evaluated. It is shown that the reallocation enables to achieve high restoration ratio with insufficient pre-assigned spare resources, such as to restore double-link failures with spare resources prepared for single-link failures, or even to restore single-link failures with no spare resources. It is also shown that pre-assigned spare resources can be reduced if the reallocation is considered in network design phase. The performance of the proposed distributed algorithm is evaluated with an event-driven simulator. The result shows that regardless of whether or not pre-assigned spare resources exist, a restoration ratio which is close to the theoretical maximum can be achieved. A proof-of-concept experimental system is developed by controlling commercial ATM switches via SNMP. The system shows it can effectively manage failures in WAN environment.