User-Centric Quality of Service Provisioning in IP Networks

The Internet has become the preferred transport medium for almost every type of communication, continuing to grow, both in terms of the number of users and delivered services. Efforts have been made to ensure that time sensitive applications receive sufficient resources and subsequently receive an acceptable Quality of Service (QoS). However, typical Internet users no longer use a single service at a given point in time, as they are instead engaged in a multimedia-rich experience, comprising of many different concurrent services. Given the scalability problems raised by the diversity of the users and traffic, in conjunction with their increasing expectations, the task of QoS provisioning can no longer be approached from the perspective of providing priority to specific traffic types over coexisting services; either through explicit resource reservation, or traffic classification using static policies, as is the case with the current approach to QoS provisioning, Differentiated Services (Diffserv). This current use of static resource allocation and traffic shaping methods reveals a distinct lack of synergy between current QoS practices and user activities, thus highlighting a need for a QoS solution reflecting the user services. The aim of this thesis is to investigate and propose a novel QoS architecture, which considers the activities of the user and manages resources from a user-centric perspective. The research begins with a comprehensive examination of existing QoS technologies and mechanisms, arguing that current QoS practises are too static in their configuration and typically give priority to specific individual services rather than considering the user experience. The analysis also reveals the potential threat that unresponsive application traffic presents to coexisting Internet services and QoS efforts, and introduces the requirement for a balance between application QoS and fairness. This thesis proposes a novel architecture, the Congestion Aware Packet Scheduler (CAPS), which manages and controls traffic at the point of service aggregation, in order to optimise the overall QoS of the user experience. The CAPS architecture, in contrast to traditional QoS alternatives, places no predetermined precedence on a specific traffic; instead, it adapts QoS policies to each individual’s Internet traffic profile and dynamically controls the ratio of user services to maintain an optimised QoS experience. The rationale behind this approach was to enable a QoS optimised experience to each Internet user and not just those using preferred services. Furthermore, unresponsive bandwidth intensive applications, such as Peer-to-Peer, are managed fairly while minimising their impact on coexisting services. The CAPS architecture has been validated through extensive simulations with the topologies used replicating the complexity and scale of real-network ISP infrastructures. The results show that for a number of different user-traffic profiles, the proposed approach achieves an improved aggregate QoS for each user when compared with Best effort Internet, Traditional Diffserv and Weighted-RED configurations. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the proposed architecture not only provides an optimised QoS to the user, irrespective of their traffic profile, but through the avoidance of static resource allocation, can adapt with the Internet user as their use of services change.France Teleco

Performance of the transmission control protocol (TCP) over wireless with quality of service.

Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the most widely used transport protocol in the Internet. TCP is a reliable transport protocol that is tuned to perform well in wired networks where packet losses are mainly due to congestion. Wireless channels are characterized by losses due to transmission errors and handoffs. TCP interprets these losses as congestion and invokes congestion control mechanisms resulting in degradation of performance. TCP is usually layered over the Internet protocol (lP) at the network layer. JP is not reliable and does not provide for any Quality of Service (QoS). The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has provided two techniques for providing QoS in the Internet. These include Integrated Services (lntServ) and Differentiated Services (DiffServ). IntServ provides flow based quality of service and thus it is not scalable on connections with large flows. DiffServ has grown in popularity since it is scalable. A packet in a DiffServ domain is classified into a class of service according to its contract profile and treated differently by its class. To provide end-to-end QoS there is a strong interaction between the transport protocol and the network protocol. In this dissertation we consider the performance of the TCP over a wireless channel. We study whether the current TCP protocols can deliver the desired quality of service faced with the challenges they have on wireless channel. The dissertation discusses the methods of providing for QoS in the Internet. We derive an analytical model for TCP protocol. It is extended to cater for the wireless channel and then further differentiated services. The model is shown to be accurate when compared to simulation. We then conclude by deducing to what degree you can provide the desired QoS with TCP on a wireless channel

What motivates New Brunswick employees to sue their employers, and does the law offer a relevant response?

Disputes between employers and employees often have damaging consequences, including employee claiming that leads to lengthy, expensive and time-intensive legal processes. It is questionable if employee-initiated legal claims always effectively respond to the concerns on which they are based. This study explores the motivations of individuals in New Brunswick, Canada in their decisions to consider legal action against their employers. It argues that more attention should be paid to the reasons why individuals elect to pursue legal remedies and to the exploration of means for avoiding litigation or addressing the resolution of such differences in more effective and efficient ways. Adopting a multiple operationism methodology, this study has explored the motives of New Brunswick employees who consider advancing legal claims against their employers and has considered the procedural and remedial capacity of the existing common law and statutory employment law system to effectively respond to those motives. In addition, the study has examined the responsiveness of alternate justice models to the employee concerns that frequently result in the initiation of legal claims

When Extrinsic Incentives Displace Intrinsic Motivation: Designing Legal Carrots and Sticks to Confront the Challenge of Motivational Crowding-Out

The rise of “nudges” has inspired countless efforts to encourage individual choices that maximize personal and collective welfare, with a preference for less restrictive tools such as setting default options or reordering choice sets. As part of this trend, there has been renewed interest in the behavioral impacts of incentives – namely, rewards or penalties for shaping individual choices, including but not limited to financial incentives. Explicit incentives are pervasive in the law, including carrots offered by governments (for example, tax deductions for charitable contributions, rebates for recycling, sentence reductions for prisoners who complete drug rehabilitation programs, and incentives for criminal informants) and statutes or regulations that govern incentives offered by private parties (for example, workplace wellness programs, compensation for blood and organ donation, and pay-for-performance in executive compensation). But despite the intuitive appeal of incentives, legal commentators have expressed increasing alarm about a potential drawback: research in behavioral economics and psychology has come to show many ways in which the use of carrots and sticks may displace other motivations for good behavior, such as altruism, civic duty, or professionalism. In legal scholarship, prevailing views of motivational crowding-out – the process by which incentives can interfere with “intrinsic” motivations for behavior – suggest that this phenomenon is an irremediable response to incentive-based policies. This Article examines a large but neglected body of empirical and theoretical literature on motivational crowding-out to show that these beliefs may be misguided. Motivational crowding-out is in fact a catch-all term for a diverse set of cognitive and behavioral processes that range from long-term changes in preferences, to the impairment of self-determination, to a complex set of signals that incentives can send to people about their abilities, social environment, values, and employers. Far from being inevitable, motivational crowding-out is responsive to changes in the way we design incentive-based policies. That is, once we understand the mechanisms of crowding-out, we can modify the incentive architecture to either minimize or amplify crowding-out effects. Remedies, however, must be tailored to the diverse causes of crowding-out, and the law has not yet recognized this problem. In light of deep anxieties about motivational crowding-out throughout the law, this Article proposes a taxonomy of crowding-out processes and introduces “incentive architecture:” the deliberate structuring of incentives to address crowding-out effects

Cartel regulation in three emerging BRICS economies: cartel and competition policies in South Africa, Brazil and India - a comparative overview

“Antitrust laws in general, and the Sherman Act in particular, are the Magna Charta of free enterprise. They are as important to the preservation of economic freedom and our free enterprise system as the Bill of Rights is to the protection of our fundamental personal freedoms. And the freedom guaranteed each and every business, no matter how small, is the freedom to compete- to assert with vigour, imagination, devotion, and ingenuity whatever economic muscle it can muster.” A. INTRODUCTION This 1972 dictum of the United States Supreme Court, read in conjunction with sections 1 and 2 of the US Sherman Act, stresses the importance of balancing the demands of a free market economy with the necessity to promote consumer welfare by limiting anti-competitive corporate market distortion. In the developing world, many states including South Africa have made some measurable progress in enacting competition legislation, or antitrust laws as they are known in the USA. South Africa is a developing country with a very recently established competition regime. The majority of the population is plagued by poverty and lack of services. Consequently, anti-competitive business activities by corporations affect on a most severe scale the poor of society: it is the poor who bear the heaviest burden of anti-competitive behaviour such as price fixing, price discrimination and market distortion leading to a market without sufficient competition. Cartel activity prevents consumers and other market stakeholders from enjoying the benefits of a free and fair market. Thus, the existence of cartels in an economy such as South Africa can have an overall negative impact on the formation of a competitive and prosperous market economy. South Africa depends on direct foreign investment and has thus an interest in demonstrating to a prospective investor that she takes a proactive stand on fair competition and the “preservation of economic freedom.” In general, cartels, the “supreme evil of antitrust”, whose activities constitute one of the “most egregious offence(s) under competition law,” particularly those involving Multinational Corporations (MNCs), often have a particularly negative impact on developing market economies: market dominance, its distortion and an absence of consumer welfare are just some possible consequences. This article argues that increased cross border co-operation through bilateral agreements between domestic competition authorities in the developed world can regulate anti-competitive cartel activities effectively. To discuss this argument, the competition policies and laws of three emerging economies, namely South Africa, India and Brazil, are compared with the competition law of the European Union. This country selection was made based on their shared category as emerging and developing as well as Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) reflecting on their similarities in terms of market nature, economic impact and potential market challenges. Brazil and India are members of the so called BRIC group .South Africa is the youngest member to join BRIC and the strongest single emerging economy on the African continent. Another similarity is the fact that all three states are member parties to the International Competition Network (ICN) but not to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose members are mostly developed nations. These organizations, together with organizations such as the European Union and other regional anti-competition bodies, play an important role to ensure that cartels are identified, investigated and subsequently regulated in terms of international and domestic competition legislation and policies of the countries affected. Subsequently, the role and functions of these two organizations in regard to limiting anti-competitive activities, especially cartels, are scrutinised within the scope of the chosen domestic jurisdictions. The article also provides an insight into cartel activities in these three emerging economies and poses the question on which of the existing methods of cooperation can be identified as the most effective one for addressing cartel activities. It provides a short overview of the existing international institutions and enforcement bodies which promote and coordinate international competition policies and anti-cartel initiatives. The cooperation methods identified and utilised by the ICN will be briefly analysed in order to support the authors’ view on the relevance and importance of bilateral cooperation agreements for the conclusion of successful cartel investigations

Biodiversity and Protected Areas

Biodiversity and Protected Areas assembles twelve topics from around the world, illustrating the complexities and promise of addressing the biodiversity crisis. Authors from Mongolia, Africa, India, Canada, Iraq, and the United States dwell on particular aspects and challenges relevant to those regions. Lessons and approaches from interesting localities, coupled with global analyses give the reader a synthetic view of emerging problems. The opportunities for understanding common issues across different geographies abound, such as comparing local conservation in sub-Saharan Africa with a distribution of very small protected areas in Massachusetts. Several topics will be of immediate interest to policymakers. The book is illustrated with numerous color maps and figures and the authors strove for clear, uncomplicated writing. The editors provide an overview of chapters, placing them in the context of other biodiversity and protected area literature. Students and conservationists attempting to broaden their views of biodiversity and protected areas should find this collection to be interesting

The elephant in the room: The rise and role of India in the climate change negotiations

The climate change negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have been ongoing since the first conference of the parties in 1995. Twenty years on there has been little progress reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the climate regime is in a state of flux and the role of developing countries therein is changing. During this period the majority of the work on climate change from within the International Relations discipline has been framed in a neoliberal institutionalist or neorealist frame. Studies in the climate policy canon have been predominantly similarly located, albeit implicitly. In its focus on India this dissertation provides a bridge between the climate policy literature and the theoretically framed climate change policy studies in the International Relations literature. This dissertation employs the Critical International Relations theoretical framework of Robert Cox. His theory outlines a 'framework for action' that enables and constrains how states act, and how they conceive of their agency. This framework, or historical structure, is created by a particular configuration of the forces exerted by ideas, institutions, and material capabilities, which when aligned, create a hegemonic historical structure. In the climate negotiations, India has been a vocal proponent of the ideas of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities from the earliest days of the Convention. India's changing material circumstances and geo-political status in the past decade raised the question of its role in the regime in relation to its long-supported ideas. This is a qualitative case study using documentary evidence triangulated with interview data from a range of key Indian stakeholders. I found that in the transition from abstract principle to operational precept the intersubjective idea of addressing climate change did not transmute into an intersubjectively shared idea of differentiation. Furthermore, once the idea of differentiation was to be operationalised in the negotiations, its primacy, indeed its very "intersubjectiveness", was contested by the idea of symmetry of obligations and responsibility. The ongoing regime flux is the outcome of this contestation between ideas held collectively by groups, as no stabilising hegemonic historical structure has been created. India's emergence has been insufficient to reinstate differentiation as an intersubjectively held idea and it is thus unable to secure a hegemonic historical structure in favour of differentiation

A historical analysis of the origins, development and nature of market conduct regulation: a study of four insurance markets

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the degree Master of Commerce (Insurance and Risk Management) by dissertation, June 2017In 2011, National Treasury proposed the introduction of the Twin Peaks regulatory model for the South African financial sector. The adoption of this model will significantly change the regulatory landscape in South Africa. A growing body of mainly government generated literature focuses predominantly on the introduction of the Twin Peaks regulatory model and concentrates on the structure of this model rather than on the details of the model’s two peaks: prudential and market conduct. Market conduct regulation is understood in broad terms, however only limited studies are available as to the details of this peak. The study provides discourse as to the history and the role of the state (with specific reference to the Lockean framework) and further examines the various economic theories of regulation which provide the justifications for regulation. A brief discussion of the Twin Peaks system provides the necessary background and contextualisation. The purpose of this study is to establish the origins, development and nature of market conduct regulation in four insurance markets, including the United Kingdom (UK), European Union (EU), United States (US) and South Africa, with specific reference to the South African short term insurance market. This is achieved by providing a narrative of the development of insurance regulation in the four markets. From this narrative, the development of market conduct regulation is specifically distilled and the applicability of the various economic theories of regulation is sporadically assessed. The findings indicate that traces of market conduct issues can be detected at various periods in the nearly 500 year history of the global insurance market. However contemporary market conduct regulation evolved in the mid-1900s in the US and between 1986 and 2000 in the UK. In this regard, market conduct regulation was pioneered in these two markets. Furthermore, the study argues that contemporary regulatory developments in the UK have seen the market gradually transition away from regulation that historically was underpinned by the Lockean framework to a new framework. The study does not define or critiqued this new framework. This may be an avenue for further and more focused research.XL201