A market managed multi-service Internet (M3I)

Bandwidth provisioning and pricing for networks with multiple classes of service

“…A QoS connection is the actual invocation and use of a service (QoS class). How the QoS is achieved depends on the underlying network protocols; it is expected in the future that the customer will be shielded from such specifics via middleware [2,23]. Once the QoS connection is established (provisioned), portions of the connection are sold (allocated) to individual users at a price; therefore, multiple users may share a single QoS connection, as seen in figure 1.…”

“…Determining the optimal amounts to provision and allocate remains a difficult problem under realistic conditions. For example, service providers must balance user needs in the short-term while provisioning connections for the long term [2]. Furthermore, this must be done in a scalable fashion to meet the growing demand for network services, while also being adaptable to future network technologies.…”

“…Microeconomics can serve as an efficient mechanism for resource management, optimal allocations, and revenue generation [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. An excellent description of the issues related to pricing and managing QoS-enabled networks in a retail market is provided in [2].…”

“…An excellent description of the issues related to pricing and managing QoS-enabled networks in a retail market is provided in [2]. Network resource provisioning has also been investigated, where bandwidth contracts are bought and sold among network brokers and service providers [9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

Towards an inter-domain billing system to support dynamic service provisioning

“…The main area of focus of M3I is IP network middleware on customer and provider systems enabling real-time price negotiation and control over application and network QoS [Briscoe03]. M3I also investigates QoS-adaptive pricing schemes as a means to manage network resources, and at the same time, to optimize revenues [M3ID8,M3ID16,Stiller01].…”