http://reeves.csc.ncsu.edu/papers-and-other-stuff/2004-02-compnet-bwprovisioning-pricing-paper.pdf

Bandwidth provisioning and pricing for networks with multiple classes of service

This work focuses on the operation of the bandwidth broker, an entity that is responsible for managing the bandwidth within a network domain and for the communication with bandwidth brokers of neighboring domains. A very important aspect of the bandwidth broker is its admission control module that determines whether the bandwidth reservation requests are going to be accepted or not. We summarize the status of the current research in this field and propose architecture for the admission control module that aims at achieving a satisfactory balance between maximizing the resource utilization for the network provider and minimizing the overhead of the module. This is achieved by gathering and examining sets of book-ahead requests and by adapting the size of the set to be examined so that the network utilization and the computation overhead are appropriately balanced.

An adaptive admission control algorithm for bandwidth brokers

Network service providers contract with network owners for connection rights, then offer individual users network access at a price. Within this hierarchy, the service provider must carefully provision and allocate (price) network resources (e.g. bandwidth). However, determining the appropriate amount to provision and allocate is problematic due to the unpredictable nature of users and market interactions. This paper introduces methods for optimally provisioning and pricing differentiated services. These methods maximizes profit, while maintaining a low blocking probability for each service class. The analytical results are validated using simulation under variable conditions. Furthermore, experimental results will demonstrate that higher profits can be obtained through shorter connection contracts.

/pdf/optimal-provisioning-and-pricing-of-internet-differentiated-3bj2ixvx73.pdf

Optimal Provisioning and Pricing of Internet Differentiated Services in Hierarchical Markets

Various forms of agreements naturally arise in the service provider model as well as in multi-party computing models such as business-to-business, utility and grid computing. The role of these agreements is twofold: they stipulate obligations and expectations of the involved parties, and they represent the goals to be met by the infrastructure. As a consequence of this latter point, in order to automate run-time adaptation and management of systems and services, agreements should be encoded and integrated in management software platforms. In this paper, we review the state of the art in software support for various forms of agreements, for all stages of their life-cycle. We also review emerging platforms and technologies in standard bodies, industries and academia.

The role of agreements in IT management software

Accounting and pricing: a forecast of the scenario of the next generation Internet

The differentiated services (DS) architecture provides a framework for the scalable provisioning of multiple service levels in the Internet. Its definition and initial work have concentrated mainly on per-hop behaviors (PHB) and mechanisms at each DS domain. Equally important is what happens between DS domains. Thanks to the flexibility of the architecture, it is the providers’ choice how to interconnect with peers. In principle, traditional, static peering agreements work together with DS, but they do not offer the flexibility and dynamics needed in an electronic market for network capacity. Therefore, we look at dynamic service level agreements at the interdomain level. Such agreements are established by software entities called traders. These traders follow market-based principles to decide which contracts will be beneficial. In particular, traders compare the offers made by neighbor providers and select the most interesting ones. This selection of peer services creates competition among providers and integrates route selection based on service level and destination. We describe and implement a framework for service level agreement trading. We show the basic workings and first performance results of SLA trading using specific traders and an experimentally defined PHB in a simulation environment. Keywords— Network architecture, differentiated services architecture, service level agreement, pricing, trading, interdomain QoS routing.

/pdf/service-level-agreement-trading-for-the-differentiated-18u0v5idwt.pdf

David Schweikert

Papers

Service level agreement trading for the differentiated services architectures

Service Level Agreement Trading