An Economic Analysis of Multiple Internet QoS Channels

With the astounding growth of traffic carried by the Internet in recent years, congestion is becoming an increasing problem. Real-time and mission-critical traffic require levels of service quality exceeding the best-effort level currently provided. Intserv and Diffserv service models have been developed to provide multiple levels of quality of service (QoS) throughout the Internet. We develop a generic economic model of network QoS to address how these levels of QoS should be specified and how they should be allocated. The pricing of marketable tokens for QoS access and its impact on efficiency are analyzed. Keywords: Internet pricing, Differentiated Service, Paris Metro Pricing, Channeling. 1.0