I own the pipes, you call the tune? The net neutrality debate and its (ir)relevance for Europe

1The debate of the so-called “net neutrality” has been under the spotlight in the US for many years, whereas many believed it would not become an issue in Europe. However, over the past few months the need to revise the current regulatory framework to encourage investment in all-IP networks has led to greater attention for net neutrality and its consequences for investment and competition. After the Commission adopted a “light-touch” approach to the issue at the end of 2007, the European Parliament has started to reconsider the issue, and it is reportedly considering a move towards more pro-neutrality rules. This paper summarises the main issues at hand in the net neutrality debate and the views expressed by advocates and opponents of the neutrality principle. The problem is described from a multi-sided market perspective, stressing the role of network operators as intermediaries in the “layered” architecture of all-IP networks. Finally, the paper discusses whether the European regulatory framework and its interaction with ex post competition policy are likely to solve many of the concerns of net neutrality advocates without any need for ad hoc regulation; and whether currently proposed solutions are likely to prove welfare-enhancing and conducive to a better regulatory environment for future e-communications.openopenRENDA A.Renda, Andre

The Economics of Net Neutrality: Implications of Priority Pricing in Access Networks

This work systematically analyzes Net Neutrality from an economic point of view. To this end a framework is developed which helps to structure the Net Neutrality debate. Furthermore, the introduction of prioritization is studied by analyzing potential effects of Quality of Service (QoS) on Content and Service Providers (CSPs) and Internet Users (IUs)

MaxMem: Colocation and Performance for Big Data Applications on Tiered Main Memory Servers

We present MaxMem, a tiered main memory management system that aims to maximize Big Data application colocation and performance. MaxMem uses an application-agnostic and lightweight memory occupancy control mechanism based on fast memory miss ratios to provide application QoS under increasing colocation. By relying on memory access sampling and binning to quickly identify per-process memory heat gradients, MaxMem maximizes performance for many applications sharing tiered main memory simultaneously. MaxMem is designed as a user-space memory manager to be easily modifiable and extensible, without complex kernel code development. On a system with tiered main memory consisting of DRAM and Intel Optane persistent memory modules, our evaluation confirms that MaxMem provides 11% and 38% better throughput and up to 80% and an order of magnitude lower 99th percentile latency than HeMem and Linux AutoNUMA, respectively, with a Big Data key-value store in dynamic colocation scenarios.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Scalable tiered main memory management for big data applications

Tiered memory is becoming an important technology to meet the demands of big data applications. New memory technologies such as non-volatile memory (NVM) and compute express link (CXL) allow for terabytes of main memory. NVM and CXL offer lower performance than that of DRAM, so they will not replace DRAM in datacenter servers. Instead, systems with these technologies provide a tiered memory system with a fast memory tier provided by DRAM and a slow memory tier provided by NVM or CXL. Effective use of tiered memory requires placing application data in the appropriate memory tier based on access frequencies as well as sharing tiered memory among many applications with different performance constraints. Existing memory management techniques struggle to manage this large and complex memory hierarchy. To allow systems to leverage the capacity offered by tiered memory, my thesis work presents two systems for terabyte-scale tiered memory management for big data applications. First, I present HeMem, which explores lightweight, scalable, and asynchronous techniques to manage tiered memory with a single big data application running on an isolated system partition. HeMem uses special hardware performance counters to sample application memory access patterns and places application pages n the appropriate memory tier asynchronously in the background. Second, I present MaxMem, which builds off of HeMem and explores how to share tiered memory among many big data applications. MaxMem uses a quality-of-service aware policy to determine fast memory allocations among applications and ensures that the most frequently accessed data remains in the fast memory tier. This allows MaxMem to balance application performance and server resource utilization.Computer Scienc

A Broadband Access Market Framework: Towards Consumer Service Level Agreements

Ubiquitous broadband access is considered by many to be necessary for the Internet to realize its full potential. But there is no generally accepted definition of what constitutes broadband access. Furthermore, there is only limited understanding of how the quality of end-to-end broadband Internet services might be assured in today?s nascent multi-service, multi-provider environment. The absence of generally accepted and standardized service definitions and mechanisms for assuring service quality is a significant barrier to competitive broadband access markets. In the business data services market and in the core of the Internet, this problem has been addressed, in part, by increased reliance on Service Level Agreements (SLAs). These SLAs provide a mechanism for service providers and customers to flexibly specify the quality of service (QoS) that will be delivered. When used in conjunction with the new standards-based technical solutions for implementing QoS, these SLAs are helping to facilitate the development of robust wholesale markets for backbone transport services and content delivery services for commercial customers. The emergence of bandwidth traders, brokers, and exchanges provide an institutional and market-based framework to support effective competition

Show Me the Money: Contracts and Agents in the Service Level Agreement Markets

Delivering real-time services (Internet telephony, video conferencing, and streaming media as well as business-critical data applications) across the Internet requires end-to-end quality of service (QoS) guarantees, which requires a hierarchy of contracts. These standardized contracts may be referred to as Service Level Agreements (SLAs). SLAs provide a mechanism for service providers and customers to flexibly specify the service to be delivered. The emergence of bandwidth and service agents, traders, brokers, exchanges and contracts can provide an institutional and business framework to support effective competition. This article identifies issues that must be addressed by SLAs for consumer applications. We introduce a simple taxonomy for classifying SLAs based on the identity of the contracting parties. We conclude by discussing implications for public policy, Internet architecture, and competition