A QoS-based charging and resource allocation framework for next generation wireless networks

Wireless networks are evolving to include Internet access to interactive multimedia and video conferencing as well as traditional services such as voice, email and web access. These new applications can demand large amounts of network resources, such as bandwidth, to achieve the highest levels of quality (e.g. picture quality). In conjunction with this trend, charging and resource allocation systems must evolve to explicitly consider the trade-off between resource consumption and the Quality of Service (QoS) provided. This paper proposes a novel QoS-based charging and resource allocation framework. The framework allocates resources to customers based on their QoS perceptions and requirements, thereby charging fairly while improving resource allocation efficiency. It also allows the network operators to pursue a wide variety of policy options, including maximizing revenue or using auction or utility-based pricing. Copyrigh

Decentralising resource management in operating systems

This dissertation explores operating system mechanisms to allow resource-aware applications to be involved in the process of managing resources under the premise that these applications (1) potentially have some (implicit) notion of their future resource demands and (2) can adapt their resource demands. The general idea is to provide feedback to resource-aware applications so that they can proactively participate in the management of resources. This approach has the benefit that resource management policies can be removed from central entities and the operating system has only to provide mechanism. Furthermore, in contrast to centralised approaches, application specific features can be more easily exploited. To achieve this aim, I propose to deploy a microeconomic theory, namely congestion or shadow pricing, which has recently received attention for managing congestion in communication networks. Applications are charged based on the potential "damage" they cause to other consumers by using resources. Consumers interpret these congestion charges as feedback signals which they use to adjust their resource consumption. It can be shown theoretically that such a system with consumers merely acting in their own self-interest will converge to a social optimum. This dissertation focuses on the operating system mechanisms required to decentralise resource management this way. In particular it identifies four mechanisms: pricing & charging, credit accounting, resource usage accounting, and multiplexing. While the latter two are mechanisms generally required for the accurate management of resources, pricing & charging and credit accounting present novel mechanisms. It is argued that congestion prices are the correct economic model in this context and provide appropriate feedback to applications. The credit accounting mechanism is necessary to ensure the overall stability of the system by assigning value to credits

A user-centered approach to network quality of service and charging

The number of network users is expected to triple between 1998 and 2002 (Cullinane, 1998). While a vision of the future Internet offers the potential to break traditional barriers in communications and commerce, the current level of service does not satisfy the requirements of many users (Network Reliability Steering Committee, 1998, Cullinane, 1998). This thesis is concerned with users' perceptions of Quality of Service (QoS), and their attitudes to charging mechanisms applied to wide-area networks. Whilst the majority of research in this area has been conducted from a technical point of view, studies addressing issues of QoS and charging from a users' perspective are limited. The aim of this research was to investigate the latter issue to provide a more complete and integrated perspective on QoS and charging in the user-network system. The thesis first addresses previous work that looks at QoS and charging, establishing a justification for the new research. This part of the thesis concludes that, whilst part of our understanding of QoS requirements can be explained by technical and economic paradigms, additional research is required to examine the perceptions and concomitant behaviour of users. The methodology employed is outlined in relation to obtaining this objective. The second part of the thesis details work undertaken. This work has made the following main contributions: *Developed a set of conceptual models that describe users' perceptions of network QoS. *Shown that these models can be used to predict users' behaviour in different contexts by capturing subjective evaluations of QoS. * Shown how a combination of established and new methods can be successfully applied in capturing and assessing users' perceptions of QoS. *Shown how the new data relates to technical and econometric research. *Provided concrete examples of how the new research can inform network systems design. The work documented in this thesis has implications for user-centred, technical and econometric research. This thesis therefore contributes, not only to the field of HCI to which it is most closely related, but provides guidelines that can be used by econometricians and network designers. The research from all three of these perspectives is concerned with the efficient function of network resource allocation systems. The work documented in this thesis has suggested how it is possible to integrate these perspectives to provide valued levels of QoS to users

サービスレベルネゴシエーションに基づくワイヤレスネットワークのサービス提供スキーム

Tohoku University加藤寧課

Communications Policy for 2006 and Beyond

In this Article, the Authors propose sweeping changes to the current telecommunications regulatory regime. With impending reform in telecommunications laws, the Authors argue that an important first step is the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to examine and recommend implementation of more market-oriented communications policy. Through maximizing the operation of the markets, the authors argue that communications policy will better serve its goals of increasing business productivity and consumer welfare through the better services and lower prices. Important steps to achieve optimal market operation include deregulating retail prices where multifirm competition is available, minimizing the cost of public property inputs, overhauling universal service, assigning greater jurisdictional authority to federal regulators, and significantly reorganizing the FCC. The Authors argue that the timely implementation of these policies is crucial for achieving United States telecommunications policy goals

Communications Policy for 2006 and Beyond

In this Article, the Authors propose sweeping changes to the current telecommunications regulatory regime. With impending reform in telecommunications laws, the Authors argue that an important first step is the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to examine and recommend implementation of more market-oriented communications policy. Through maximizing the operation of the markets, the authors argue that communications policy will better serve its goals of increasing business productivity and consumer welfare through the better services and lower prices. Important steps to achieve optimal market operation include deregulating retail prices where multifirm competition is available, minimizing the cost of public property inputs, overhauling universal service, assigning greater jurisdictional authority to federal regulators, and significantly reorganizing the FCC. The Authors argue that the timely implementation of these policies is crucial for achieving United States telecommunications policy goals

The History of Communications and Its Implications for the Internet

The Internet is the latest in a long succession of communication technologies. The goal of this work is to draw lessons from the evolution of all these services. Little attention is paid to technology as such, since that has changed radically many times. Instead, the stress is on the steady growth in volume of communication, the evolution in the type of traffic sent, the qualitative change this growth produces in how people treat communication, and the evolution of pricing. The focus is on the user, and in particular on how quality and price differentiation have been used by service providers to influence consumer behavior, and how consumers have reacted. There are repeating patterns in the histories of communication technologies, including ordinary mail, the telegraph, the telephone, and the Internet. In particular, the typical story for each service is that quality rises, prices decrease, and usage increases to produce increased total revenues. At the same time, prices become simpler. The historical analogies of this paper suggest that the Internet will evolve in a similar way, towards simplicity. The schemes that aim to provide differentiated service levels and sophisticated pricing schemes are unlikely to be widely adopted. Price and quality differentiation are valuable tools that can provide higher revenues and increase utilization efficiency of a network, and thus in general increase social welfare. Such measures, most noticeable in airline pricing, are spreading to many services and products, especially high-tech ones. However, it appears that as communication services become less expensive and are used more fre-quently, those arguments lose out to customers? desire for simplicity

End-to-end security in active networks

Active network solutions have been proposed to many of the problems caused by the increasing heterogeneity of the Internet. These ystems allow nodes within the network to process data passing through in several ways. Allowing code from various sources to run on routers introduces numerous security concerns that have been addressed by research into safe languages, restricted execution environments, and other related areas. But little attention has been paid to an even more critical question: the effect on end-to-end security of active flow manipulation. This thesis first examines the threat model implicit in active networks. It develops a framework of security protocols in use at various layers of the networking stack, and their utility to multimedia transport and flow processing, and asks if it is reasonable to give active routers access to the plaintext of these flows. After considering the various security problem introduced, such as vulnerability to attacks on intermediaries or coercion, it concludes not. We then ask if active network systems can be built that maintain end-to-end security without seriously degrading the functionality they provide. We describe the design and analysis of three such protocols: a distributed packet filtering system that can be used to adjust multimedia bandwidth requirements and defend against denial-of-service attacks; an efficient composition of link and transport-layer reliability mechanisms that increases the performance of TCP over lossy wireless links; and a distributed watermarking servicethat can efficiently deliver media flows marked with the identity of their recipients. In all three cases, similar functionality is provided to designs that do not maintain end-to-end security. Finally, we reconsider traditional end-to-end arguments in both networking and security, and show that they have continuing importance for Internet design. Our watermarking work adds the concept of splitting trust throughout a network to that model; we suggest further applications of this idea

Individual Mobile Communication Services and Tariffs

Individual services and tariffs existed briefly in the beginning of telecommunications history 150 years ago but faded away over time. Service provisioning evolved into the current supplier-centric situation which has many limitations and disadvantages. This thesis re-embraces the user-centric service provisioning and tariffing philosophy and applies it to current mobile communication services setting, which differs significantly in scale and scope from the historical practices. A design methodology and tool for the determination of individualized mobile services and tariffs is provided, and benefits to both the user and the supplier are evaluated. The design has three aspects. The first involves the construction of a conceptual framework consisting of the behavioral models of the user and the supplier (firm) and a game theoretical negotiation mechanism to determine individual services and tariffs. Second is the operationalization of the conceptual framework in a computational design with methods, computational models, negotiation algorithms, risk metrics and a prototype implementation. Third is the extension of the individual services and tariffs concept to a community setting via a proposed community business model. Two evaluations are performed. First, for the firm-based design, a user survey is conducted and computational cases, that address value-added mobile services and generic mobile service bundles, are developed. The numerical analyses show that the users always achieve gains in utility. The benefits to the supplier include adjustable risk-profit equilibrium points, increased network traffic and reduced churn. Second, two case studies on communities are conducted. The results demonstrate that the proposed business model of community-based individual service provisioning and tariffing can meet the demands of their members precisely and address both affordability and sustainability issues. Last, a specific engineering implementation and integration of the individualized service and tariff design tools into the existing infrastructure of the communication services suppliers is proposed. Further research issues are pointed out