On Optimal Service Differentiation in Congested Network Markets

As Internet applications have become more diverse in recent years, users having heavy demand for online video services are more willing to pay higher prices for better services than light users that mainly use e-mails and instant messages. This encourages the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to explore service differentiations so as to optimize their profits and allocation of network resources. Much prior work has focused on the viability of network service differentiation by comparing with the case of a single-class service. However, the optimal service differentiation for an ISP subject to resource constraints has remained unsolved. In this work, we establish an optimal control framework to derive the analytical solution to an ISP's optimal service differentiation, i.e. the optimal service qualities and associated prices. By analyzing the structures of the solution, we reveal how an ISP should adjust the service qualities and prices in order to meet varying capacity constraints and users' characteristics. We also obtain the conditions under which ISPs have strong incentives to implement service differentiation and whether regulators should encourage such practices

Paid Peering, Settlement-Free Peering, or Both?

With the rapid growth of congestion-sensitive and data-intensive applications, traditional settlement-free peering agreements with best-effort delivery often do not meet the QoS requirements of content providers (CPs). Meanwhile, Internet access providers (IAPs) feel that revenues from end-users are not sufficient to recoup the upgrade costs of network infrastructures. Consequently, some IAPs have begun to offer CPs a new type of peering agreement, called paid peering, under which they provide CPs with better data delivery quality for a fee. In this paper, we model a network platform where an IAP makes decisions on the peering types offered to CPs and the prices charged to CPs and end-users. We study the optimal peering schemes for the IAP, i.e., to offer CPs both the paid and settlement-free peering to choose from or only one of them, as the objective is profit or welfare maximization. Our results show that 1) the IAP should always offer the paid and settlement-free peering under the profit-optimal and welfare-optimal schemes, respectively, 2) whether to simultaneously offer the other peering type is largely driven by the type of data traffic, e.g., text or video, and 3) regulators might want to encourage the IAP to allocate more network capacity to the settlement-free peering for increasing user welfare

Investing in Sustainable Energy Futures: Multilateral Development Banks' Investments in Energy Policy

Analyzes MDB loans for electricity projects and lays out policy reforms, regulations, and institutional capacities needed to enable public and private investment in sustainable energy and ways for MDBs to address them consistently and comprehensively

A study of ISP pricing for networks with peer-to-peer users.

Wang, Qian.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-74).Abstract also in Chinese.Abstract --- p.iAcknowledgement --- p.iiiChapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 2 --- A Review of Pricing in Internet Industry --- p.5Chapter 2.1 --- Static Pricing --- p.6Chapter 2.1.1 --- Flat-rate Pricing --- p.6Chapter 2.1.2 --- Usage-based Pricing --- p.7Chapter 2.1.3 --- Paris Metro Pricing --- p.8Chapter 2.2 --- Dynamic Pricing --- p.9Chapter 2.2.1 --- Smart-market Pricing --- p.9Chapter 2.2.2 --- Responsive Pricing --- p.11Chapter 2.2.3 --- Edge Pricing --- p.12Chapter 2.3 --- Comparisons --- p.14Chapter 2.4 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.17Chapter 3 --- Uplink Pricing --- p.18Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.18Chapter 3.2 --- Model Description --- p.26Chapter 3.3 --- Uplink Pricing in a Competitive Market --- p.36Chapter 3.4 --- The Cooperative Strategy with Uplink Pricing --- p.40Chapter 3.4.1 --- The Cooperative Case --- p.41Chapter 3.4.2 --- The Threat Strategy --- p.45Chapter 3.5 --- Further Discussion --- p.47Chapter 3.5.1 --- Accounting Cost --- p.47Chapter 3.5.2 --- Peer-to-Peer Locality --- p.48Chapter 3.6 --- Related Works --- p.48Chapter 3.7 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.49Chapter 4 --- Viability of Paris Metro Pricing --- p.51Chapter 4.1 --- The Model --- p.52Chapter 4.2 --- Flat-rate Pricing versus Paris Metro Pricing --- p.54Chapter 4.2.1 --- One-channel Flat-rate Pricing --- p.55Chapter 4.2.2 --- Two-Channel Identical Pricing --- p.56Chapter 4.2.3 --- Flat-rate Pricing versus Two-Channel Iden-tical Pricing --- p.57Chapter 4.2.4 --- Flat-rate Pricing versus Paris Metro Pricing --- p.59Chapter 4.3 --- Case Studies --- p.60Chapter 4.4 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.62Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.63A Equation Derivation --- p.65Chapter A. --- l Proof for Lemma 3.3.2 --- p.65Bibliography --- p.7

A duopoly model with heterogeneous congestion-sensitive customers

This paper analyzes a model with multiple firms (providers), and two classes of customers. These customers classes are characterized by their attitude towards `congestion' (caused by other customers using the same resources); a firm is selected on the basis of both the prices charged by the firms, and the `congestion levels'. The model can be represented by a two-stage game: in the first providers set their prices, whereas in the second the customers choose the provider (or to not use any service at all) for given prices. We explicitly allow the providers to split their resources, in order to serve more than just one market segment. This enables us to further analyze the Paris metro pricing ({\sc Pmp}) proposal for service differentiation in the Internet. \u