A market-based allocation mechanism for the DiffServ framework

Public networks currently offer only one service model, the best-effort. Increased commercial usage and convergence of networks have led to demand for guaranteed quality of service for a class of premium applications. While such traffic may constitute only a fraction of the network usage, the economic impact would be significant. Current engineering efforts to provide a multi-tier service model center on the DiffServ architecture. The contention of this paper is that a differentiated service model needs to be complemented by economic resource allocation mechanisms which include some form of pricing that provides the right incentives for users and network providers to sustain the model. The paper briefly reviews the DiffSer, model, describes a proposed instantiation of it and outlines a market-based allocation mechanism designed to complement such an architecture. The objective is to provide a conceptual framework that shows it is possible to bridge economics and network engineering in deriving a feasible economic model for multi-tier service architecture. The allocation mechanism is initially described for a single domain and later on, extended to multiple domains with individual bandwidth brokers. The paper addresses the issue of bilateral agreements among domains to facilitate interconnection from an economic perspective. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.