Internet Interconnection Techno-economics: A Proposal for Assured Quality Services and Business Models

The Internet is constructed by means of complex business interconnection agreements among multiple networks. However, the most commonly used agreements do not contain explicit Quality of Service reference. In this study a business rationale for Assured Service Quality (ASQ) inter-network services is presented and potential business models for their realization are proposed and analyzed. It is argued that ASQ products and business models could greatly enhance the health of the Internet interconnection ecosystem. A business model design framework that encompasses the key strategic decisions that would enable ASQ provisioning and generic collaboration is also provided. This framework is then elaborated using a number of off-net content delivery scenarios. Conclusions are hence drawn on the role of ASQ and ASQ-driven business models for the sustainable development of the "Future Internet"

Toward a new Telco role in future content distribution services

International audienceas Content Distribution Services become at the center of network use, OTTs strengthen their dominance over the internet. On the other hand, operators like Telcos see their role shrinking to "dumb pipes" providers. This paper introduces a new Telco role in future content distribution services. In particular, it focuses on the "value" that Telco, as a network operator, can bring to CDN providers and Content providers. Value is assessed with respect to both users' trends and content ecosystem evolution. After our review, we reached two conclusions. Many of Telco assets are likely to be of interest for other content players. An open and efficient control infrastructure is the key for reaching an enhanced business position of the Telco

A Public Option for the Core

This paper is focused not on the Internet architecture – as defined by layering, the narrow waist of IP, and other core design principles – but on the Internet infrastructure, as embodied in the technologies and organizations that provide Internet service. In this paper we discuss both the challenges and the opportunities that make this an auspicious time to revisit how we might best structure the Internet’s infrastructure. Currently, the tasks of transit-between-domains and last-mile-delivery are jointly handled by a set of ISPs who interconnect through BGP. In this paper we propose cleanly separating these two tasks. For transit, we propose the creation of a “public option” for the Internet’s core backbone. This public option core, which complements rather than replaces the backbones used by large-scale ISPs, would (i) run an open market for backbone bandwidth so it could leverage links offered by third-parties, and (ii) structure its terms-of-service to enforce network neutrality so as to encourage competition and reduce the advantage of large incumbents

Social network support for data delivery infrastructures

Network infrastructures often need to stage content so that it is accessible to consumers. The standard solution, deploying the content on a centralised server, can be inadequate in several situations. Our thesis is that information encoded in social networks can be used to tailor content staging decisions to the user base and thereby build better data delivery infrastructures. This claim is supported by two case studies, which apply social information in challenging situations where traditional content staging is infeasible. Our approach works by examining empirical traces to identify relevant social properties, and then exploits them. The first study looks at cost-effectively serving the ``Long Tail'' of rich-media user-generated content, which need to be staged close to viewers to control latency and jitter. Our traces show that a preference for the unpopular tail items often spreads virally and is localised to some part of the social network. Exploiting this, we propose Buzztraq, which decreases replication costs by selectively copying items to locations favoured by viral spread. We also design SpinThrift, which separates popular and unpopular content based on the relative proportion of viral accesses, and opportunistically spins down disks containing unpopular content, thereby saving energy. The second study examines whether human face-to-face contacts can efficiently create paths over time between arbitrary users. Here, content is staged by spreading it through intermediate users until the destination is reached. Flooding every node minimises delivery times but is not scalable. We show that the human contact network is resilient to individual path failures, and for unicast paths, can efficiently approximate flooding in delivery time distribution simply by randomly sampling a handful of paths found by it. Multicast by contained flooding within a community is also efficient. However, connectivity relies on rare contacts and frequent contacts are often not useful for data delivery. Also, periods of similar duration could achieve different levels of connectivity; we devise a test to identify good periods. We finish by discussing how these properties influence routing algorithms.This work was supported by a St. John's College Benefactor's Scholarship and a Research Studentship from the Cambridge Philosophical Society

The Role of Caching in Future Communication Systems and Networks

This paper has the following ambitious goal: to convince the reader that content caching is an exciting research topic for the future communication systems and networks. Caching has been studied for more than 40 years, and has recently received increased attention from industry and academia. Novel caching techniques promise to push the network performance to unprecedented limits, but also pose significant technical challenges. This tutorial provides a brief overview of existing caching solutions, discusses seminal papers that open new directions in caching, and presents the contributions of this special issue. We analyze the challenges that caching needs to address today, also considering an industry perspective, and identify bottleneck issues that must be resolved to unleash the full potential of this promising technique

Quality of Service improvements for real time multimedia applications using next generation network architectures and blockchain in Internet Service Provider cooperative scenario

Real time communications are becoming part of our daily life, requiring constrained requisites with the purpose of being enjoyed in harmony by end users. The factors ruling these requisites are Quality of Service parameters of the users' Internet connections. Achieving a satisfactory QoS level for real time communications depends on parameters that are strongly influenced by the quality of the network connections among the Internet Service Providers, which are located in the path between final users and Over The Top service providers that are supplying them with real time services. Final users can be: business people having real time videoconferences, or adopting crytpocurrencies in their exchanges, videogamers playing online games together with others residing in other countries, migrants talking with their relatives or watching their children growing up in their home countries, people with disabilities adopting tecnologies to help them, doctors performing remote surgeries, manufacturers adopting augmented reality devices to perform dangerous tasks. Each of them performing their daily activities are requiring specific QoS parameters to their ISPs, that nowadays seem to be unable to provide them with a satisfactory QoS level for these kinds of real time services. Through the adoption of next generation networks, such as the Information Centric Networking, it would be possible to overcome the QoS problems that nowadays are experienced. By adopting Blockchain technologies, in several use cases, it would be possible to improve those security aspects related to the non-temperability of information and privacy. I started this thesis analyzing next generation architectures enabling real time multimedia communications. In Software Defined Networking, Named Data Networking and Community Information Centric Networking, I highlighted potential approaches to solve QoS problems that are affecting real time multimedia applications. During my experiments I found that applications able to transmit high quality videos, such as 4k or 8k videos, or to directly interact with devices AR/VR enabled are missing for both ICN approaches. Then I proposed a REST interface for the enforcing of a specific QoS parameter, the round trip time (RTT) taking into consideration the specific use case of a game company that connects with the same telecommunication company of the final user. Supposing that the proposed REST APIs have been deployed in the game company and in the ISP, when one or more users are experiencing lag, the game company will try to ask the ISP to reduce the RTT for that specific user or that group of users. This request can be done by performing a call to a method where IP address(es) and the maximum RTT desired are passed. I also proposed other methods, through which it would be possible to retrieve information about the QoS parameters, and exchange, if necessary, an exceeding parameter in change of another one. The proposed REST APIs can also be used in more complex scenarios, where ISPs along the path are chained together, in order to improve the end to end QoS among Over The Top service provider and final users. To store the information exchanged by using the proposed REST APIs, I proposed to adopt a permissioned blockchain, analizying the ISPs cooperative use case with Hyperledger Fabric, where I proposed the adoption of the Proof of Authority consensus algorithm, to increase the throughput in terms of transactions per second. In a specific case that I examined, I am proposing a combination of Information Centric Networking and Blockchain, in an architecture where ISPs are exchanging valuable information regarding final Users, to improve their QoS parameters. I also proposed my smart contract for the gaming delay use case, that can be used to rule the communication among those ISPs that are along the path among OTT and final users. An extension of this work can be done, by defining billing costs for the QoS improvements