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iREX: inter-domain QoS automation using economics
... In this regard, a novel inter-domain resource exchange architecture (iREX) for the automated deployment of Internet traffic with QoS requirements has been proposed by Yahaya and Suda [88,89] and Yahaya, Harks, and Suda [90]. The iREX architecture is based on the "Posted Price Competition" economic model in which providers independently choose prices that are publicly communicated to resource consumers on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, see Abbink [1] for an introduction to this economic model. ...
... The routing of a demand along paths is fixed by establishing a contract between the source domain and all domains along the chosen paths. According to Yahaya and Suda [88,89], we assume that providers determine prices according to predefined load dependent price functions. Such prices, however, are only valid for a predefined demand size (bundle size), that is, routing flow of bundle size prompts an update of arc prices. ...
... Figure 3.1 illustrates the arc costs for demand divided into three pieces. Note that the above described single path routing for a discrete bundle size corresponds to the working mechanism of the iREX protocol as specified by Yahaya and Suda [88,89]. Given flows f 1 , . . . ...
... [4] and [5], we have shown that one of the benefits of the iREX architecture is that it increases network efficiency by deploying ID QoS policy based on the current least congested path, resulting in less network congestion and less request blocking when compared to the current SLA method. ...
... Another method to deploy E2E ID QoS policy has been suggested by the inter-domain Resource Exchange architecture (iREX) [4] [5]. iREX facilitates an ID economic market to trade ID QoS resources with three basic functionalities: 1) network resource information evaluation and dissemination, 2) network resource trading, and 3) network resource reputation score maintenance. ...
... In [4] and [5], we have shown that one of the benefits of the iREX architecture is that it increases network efficiency by deploying ID QoS policy based on the current least congested path, resulting in less network congestion and less request blocking when compared to the current SLA method. In this paper, we explore the issue of efficiency further by addressing the question " how much is congestion actually decreased when using iREX? ...
Abstract, The inter-domain Resource Exchange (iREX) ar-chitecture uses economic market mechanisms to automate the deployment of end to end (E2E) inter-domain (ID) quality of service (QoS) policy among resource consumer and resource provider Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Previous simulation results have shown that iREX allows more coexisting ID policy deployments with less network congestion when compared to the existing method. In this paper we explore iREX's network load distribution efficiency limits by comparing iREX's performance to a lower bound for network congestion. We present an ana-lytical model of iREX in terms of a min-cost flow problem, and numerical results of efficiency loss between iREX simulations and derived optimal solutions based on multi-commodity flow optimization models. Our results show that for nominal to high traffic loads of 50% or more, iREX deviates a maximum of approximately 30% from the derived lower bound, while the current method deviates a maximum of 350%. Index Terms, inter-domain; QoS policy; resource allocation and management; network control by pricing; economics.
... An automated method for negotiating and deploying E2E ID QoS policy in an ad-hoc manner has been proposed by Yahaya and Suda in the inter-domain Resource Exchange architecture (iREX) [10], [11]. iREX is a fully distributed architecture that empowers Internet domains to self-manage E2E ID QoS policy by enabling an autonomic system based on economics. ...
... Precursors [10] and [11] to this paper have shown that one of the benefits of the iREX architecture is that it enables an increased number of coexisting ID QoS policies to be deployed compared to the current method while still maintaining a lower level of congestion. iREX achieves this lowering of congestion by efficiently taking advantage of unused resources along multiple routes for the same source-destination domain pair. ...
... Besides monetary cost, network congestion is also an important metric for E2E ID QoS deployment as suggested by Yahaya and Suda [10], [11]. Our goal in this section is to investigate conditions on price functions, under which the efficiency loss of iREX with respect to network congestion is bounded. ...
The inter-domain resource exchange (iREX) architecture uses economic market mechanisms to automate the ad-hoc negotiation and deployment of end to end inter-domain quality of service policy among resource consumer and resource provider . In this paper, we explore iREX's network load distribution by comparing its performance to a lower bound for network congestion in two ways. We first present an analytical model of iREX in terms of an online algorithm and analyze its efficiency via competitive analysis. Our main result shows that the efficiency loss of iREX with respect to monetary cost is upper-bounded by a factor of 8 K/2 K+1, where K s the number of deployments, provided affine linear price functions are used. When the price functions are used to model congestion in the network, this result implies upper bounds on the efficiency loss of iREX with respect to network congestion. We then complement the analytical model with a numerical study using simulations.with optimal solutions derived from unsplittable and splittable multi-commodity flow optimization models. Our numerical results show that for nominal to high traffic loads of 40% or more, iREX deviates a maximum of about 20% from the lower bound, while the current method deviates a maximum of 300%.
... The problem under investigation arises, for instance, in an inter-domain Quality of Service (QoS) market, in which multiple service providers offer network resources (capacity) to enable Internet traffic with specific QoS constraints, see for example Yahaya and Suda [27] and Yahaya, Harks, and Suda [26]. In such a market, each service provider advertises prices for resources that he wants to sell. ...
... Yahaya et al. [27,26] empirically studied the performance of a greedy singlepath routing protocol for a fixed network topology. This problem was first Table 1: Lower bounds (LB) and upper bounds (UB) on the competitive ratio of any deterministic online algorithm and on Seq 2 for affine linear price functions and without time windows as discussed in Harks et al. [18]; here n is the number of commodities. ...
We consider a multicommodity routing problem, where de- mands,are released,online and,have,to be routed,in a network,during specified time windows.,The objective,is to minimize,a time,and,load dependent,convex,cost function,of the aggregate,arc flow. First, we study the fractional routing variant. We present two online algorithms, called Seq and Seq,. We prove that for polynomial price functions with nonnegative coecients,and maximum
... We see Seq and the OnlineMCRP as a first step towards an analytical methodology for the following practical application. The problem under investigation arises in an inter-domain Quality of Service (QoS) market, where multiple service providers offer network resources (capacity) to enable Internet traffic with specific QoS constraints, see for example Yahaya and Suda [15] and Yahaya, Harks, and Suda [14]. In such a market, each service provider advertises prices for resources that he wants to sell. ...
... In the limiting case, where the bundle size tends to zero, the routing cost on an arc is given by the integral over the arc flow with respect to the corresponding price function. In [15] [14], a shortest path routing is introduced and investigated via simulations on real world networks and traffic demands. Their work provides empirical evidence for the efficiency of this working mechanism in such an inter-domain QoS market. ...
We study online multicommodity routing problems in networks, in which commodities have to be routed sequentially. The flow of each commodity can be split on several paths. Arcs are equipped with load dependent price functions defining routing costs, which have to be minimized. We discuss a greedy online algorithm that routes each commodity by minimizing a convex cost function that depends on the previously routed flow. We present a competitive analysis of this algorithm showing that for affine price functions this algorithm is
\(\frac{4K^{2}}{(1+K)^{2}}\)
-competitive, where K is the number of commodities. For networks with two nodes and parallel arcs, this algorithm is optimal. Without restrictions on the price functions and network, no algorithm is competitive.
We then investigate a variant in which the demands have to be routed unsplittably. In this case, it is NP-hard to compute the offline optimum. The variant of the greedy algorithm that produces unsplittable flows is
\((3+2\sqrt{2})\)
-competitive, and we prove a lower bound of 2 for the competitive ratio of any deterministic online algorithm.
... This results in a Multiple sinks, multiple sources variant of the Multicommodity Minimal Cost Flow Problem, which will be discussed in Section 2.3. In more recent applications the problem is used to solve container shipment problems by Krile [12], where Yahaya and Sunda [13], [14] used it to model internet traffic routing. ...
... For example the decision of selecting local preference is very mu ch local to an ISP in order to balance its outgoing traffic (selecting the path to forward to the next ISP). On the other hand, an AS which is used less frequently is less congested and has a better chance to support QoS resources [15]. Traffic Engineering Mapper (TEM) has a repository that holds AS relationships and the hierarchy for interconnectivity between various ASs. ...
An important objective of Internet traffic Engineering is to facilitate reliable network operations by providing proper QoS to different services through mechanisms which will enhance network integrity and achieve network survivability. Current Internet architecture is distributed in nature, interconnected by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), where a central goal of each service provider is to enhance emergent properties of their own network by providing better service qualities with strong emphasis on economic considerations. Hence, service providers aim at getting the best result based upon economic considerations and governed by their network wide policies. In this paper we present a scheme in which Autonomous System (AS) relationships are central to any policy decision imposed by individual ISPs. Based on these policy relationships, we propose a framework which is expected to match the need for better QoS, uniform Internet wide service management and contribute efficiently towards traffic engineering. This paper presents an integrated approach to traffic engineering, routing and policy mechanisms for better management of QoS over the Internet.
... Preliminary work on iREX concentrating on how economics could be used for E2E ID QoS was previously published in [31]. ...
This paper introduces the inter-domain Resource Exchange (iREX) architecture for the automated deployment of fault tolerant end to end (E2E) inter-domain (ID) quality of service (QoS) policy among resource user and resource provider Internet Service Providers (ISPs). iREX uses economics and fully distributed mechanisms to empower domains to self-manage the deployment of E2E ID QoS policy. In iREX, resource user domains select and reserve ID QoS resources to form E2E ID QoS policy while resource provider domains provide information about available ID QoS resources and support the deployment of policies. iREX promotes accountability by enabling the establishment of bilateral agreements between a resource user ISP and all resource provider ISPs, and promotes congestion- avoidance by enabling a distributed resource selection process that selects the least congested ID deployment path. With iREX, domains cooperate to deploy ID QoS policy while maintaining their autonomy at all times. Simulation results show that iREX blocks fewer reservations and causes less congestion than the existing method, and that iREX is able to recover from faults.
... Bandwidth switching exchanges like Tradingcom Europe [27] are centralized services that operate similar to stock exchanges where ISPs trade excess capacity – iREX is a fully distributed architecture that can be used for similar purposes, but without the use of any centralized entity. Preliminary work on iREX was previously published in [1], work defining the initial iREX architecture was previously published in [2], and work exploring the efficiency of iREX was previously published in [3]. ...
The inter-domain Resource Exchange (iREX) architecture uses economic market mechanisms to automate the deployment of end-to-end (E2E) inter-domain (ID) quality of service (QoS) policy among resource consumer and resource provider Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In iREX, each policy reservation is deployed on a single E2E ID path made up of the most "desirable" (i.e. cheapest and least congested) ISP resources. To accommodate ISPs that prefer redundancy when deploying ID QoS policy, in this paper we introduce an extension to the iREX architecture that gives an originating ISP a multi- path option (MPO) when deploying a reservation. MPO takes an initiating ISP's preference for redundancy and provides information about the available path options to achieve this preference in a distributed manner. Our simulation results show that while providing redundancy to the originating ISP using MPO does increase its resource costs in accordance to an ISP's preference, it only marginally increases overhead, and does not affect overall network performance - in fact the use of MPO lowers congestion.
... For example the decision of selecting local preference is very much local to an ISP in order to balance its outgoing traffic (selecting the path to forward packets to the next ISP). On the other hand, an AS which is used less frequently is less congested and has a better chance of providing QoS resources [5]. ...
The study of Quality of Service (QoS) has become of great importance since the Internet is used to support a wide variety of new services and applications with its legacy structure. Current Internet architecture is based on the Best Effort (BE) model, which attempts to deliver all traffic as soon as possible within the limits of its abilities, but without any guarantee about throughput, delay, packet loss, etc. We develop a three-layer policy based architecture which can be deployed to control network resources intelligently and support QoS sensitive applications such as real-time voice and video streams along with standard applications in the Internet. In order to achieve selected QoS parameter values (e.g. loss, delay and PDV) within the bounds set through SLAs for high priority voice traffic in the Internet, we used traffic engineering techniques and policy based routing supported by Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Use of prototype and simulations validates function-ality of our architecture.
The problem of providing quality of service (QoS) in the Internet stems from the original choice of a datagram packet switching service model for the Internet protocol (IP). Since, in principle, each packet can take any path to the destination, it is impossible to provide any absolute guarantees about service. This paper presents a scheme using traffic engineering techniques and implements policy based routing supported by border gateway protocol (BGP) to achieve QoS parameters (loss, delay and jitter) values within the bound for high priority voice traffic in the Internet. Simulation using OPNET shows how such techniques can achieve the desired results.
A common criticism of the current Internet is the fact that it does not offer quality of service (QoS) guarantees across autonomous
system boundaries. The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is central to solve this problem, since it enables AS to distribute reachability
information. However, BGP is agnostic of any performance or QoS metrics. For this reason, the debate about the requirements
for the future interdomain routing architecture and about whether these requirements are best met by an approach of introducing
changes into BGP or by replacing BGP is still open. This article provides an insight into the interdomain QoS routing problem.
First, the main drawbacks of current interdomain routing with regard to the provision of QoS are identified. Second, a survey
of the most relevant interdomain QoS routing approaches are described and discussed. We also give a broad perspective on challenges
surrounding the issue of whether to extend or replace BGP to support QoS, with particular emphasis on the technical challenges.
However, we also point out some nontechnical unsolved challenges that, in our perspective, are still almost certainly the
biggest barrier to the development of interdomain QoS routing.
Internetworks that are global in scale, contain multiple administrative domains, and support a range of services present special requirements for routing. Multiple administrative domains introduce the need for policy-sensitive routing. Service heterogeneity intensifies the requirement for type of service (TOS) routing, as well as other protocol support for handling a range of services, from datagrams to multimedia streams. Key concepts and protocols developed as part of the interdomain policy routing (IDPR) architecture are summarized. Emphasis is placed on the route installation and packet forwarding mechanisms because they are critical to protocol performance and differ significantly from current practice in datagram wide area networks
The purpose of SDRP is to support source-initiated selection of
routes to complement the route selection provided by existing routing
protocols for both inter-domain and intra-domain routes. This
document refers to such source-initiated routes as "SDRP routes".
This document describes the packet format and forwarding procedure
for SDRP. It also describes procedures for ascertaining feasibility
of SDRP routes. Other components not described here are routing
information distribution and route computation. This portion of the
protocol may initially be used with manually configured routes. The
same packet format and processing will be usable with dynamic route
information distribution and computation methods under development.
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an inter-Autonomous System
routing protocol. It is built on experience gained with EGP as
defined in RFC 904 [1] and EGP usage in the NSFNET Backbone as
described in RFC 1092 [2] and RFC 1093 [3].
The primary function of a BGP speaking system is to exchange network
reachability information with other BGP systems. This network
reachability information includes information on the list of
Autonomous Systems (ASs) that reachability information traverses.
This information is sufficient to construct a graph of AS
connectivity from which routing loops may be pruned and some policy
decisions at the AS level may be enforced.
. This is a preliminary version of a paper prepared for the Tenth Michigan Public Utility Conference at Western Michigan University March 25--27, 1993. We describe the history, technology and cost structure of the Internet. We also describe a possible smart-market mechanism for pricing traffic on the Internet. Keywords. Networks, Internet, NREN. Address. Hal R. Varian, Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Department of Economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220. E-mail: jmm@umich.edu, halv@umich.edu. Some Economics of the Internet Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason Hal R. Varian The High Performance Computing Act of 1991 established the National Research and Education Network (NREN). The NREN is sometimes thought of as the "successor" to the NSFNET, the so-called backbone of the Internet, and is hoped by some to serve as a model for a future National Public Network. It is widely expected that substantial public and private resources will be invested in the NREN and other high performance ...
. This paper was prepared for the conference "Public Access to the Internet," JFK School of Government, May 26--27 , 1993. We describe the technology and cost structure of the NSFNET backbone of the Internet, and discuss how one might price Internet access and use. We argue that usage-based pricing is likely to be necessary to control congestion on the Internet and propose a particular implementating of usage-based pricing using a "smart market". Keywords. Networks, Internet, NREN, NII. Address. Hal R. Varian, Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Department of Economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220. E-mail: jmm@umich.edu, halv@umich.edu. Pricing the Internet Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason Hal R. Varian On December 23, 1992 the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it will cease funding the ANS T3 Internet backbone in the near future. This is a major step in the transition from a government-funded to a commercial Internet. This movement has been welcomed by private pr...
Policy Routing (PR) is a new area of development that attempts to incorporate policy related constraints on inter-Administrative Domain (AD) communication into the route computation and forwarding of inter-AD packets.
Proposals for inter-AD routing mechanisms are discussed in the context of a design space defined by three design parameters: location of routing decision (i.e., source or hop-by-hop), algorithm used (i.e., link state or distance vector), and expression of policy in topology or in link status. We conclude that an architecture based upon source routing, a link state algorithm, and policy information in the link state advertisements, is best able to address the long-term policy requirements of inter-AD routing. However, such an architecture raises several new and challenging research issues related to scaling.
As the internet makes the transition from research testbed to commercial enterprise, the topic of pricing in computer networks has suddenly attracted great attention. Much of the discussion in the network design community and the popular press centers on the usage-based versus flat pricing debate. The more academic literature has largely focused on devising optimal pricing policies; achieving optimal welfare requires charging marginal congestion costs for usage. We contend that the research agenda on pricing in computer networks should shift away from the optimality paradigm and focus more on structural and architectural issues.
This paper presents the design of a new Internet routing architecture (NIRA). In today's Internet, users can pick their own ISPs, but once the packets have entered the network, the users have no control over the overall routes their packets take. NIRA aims at providing end users the ability to choose the sequence of Internet service providers a packet traverses. User choice fosters competition, which imposes an economic discipline on the market, and fosters innovation and the introduction of new services.This paper explores various technical problems that would have to be solved to give users the ability to choose: how a user discovers routes and whether the dynamic conditions of the routes satisfy his requirements, how to efficiently represent routes, and how to properly compensate providers if a user chooses to use them. In particular, NIRA utilizes a hierarchical provider-rooted addressing scheme so that a common type of domain-level route can be efficiently represented by a pair of addresses. In NIRA, each user keeps track of the topology information on domains that provide transit service for him. A source retrieves the topology information of the destination on demand and combines this information with his own to discover end-to-end routes. This route discovery process ensures that each user does not need to know the complete topology of the Internet.
We study the relation between the number of firms and price-cost margins under price competition with uncertainty about competitors' costs. We report an experiment in which two, three, and four identical firms repeatedly interact in this environment. In line with the theoretical prediction, market prices decrease with the number of firms, but on average stay above marginal costs. Pricing is more aggressive than in equilibrium. Absolute and relative surplus increases with the number of firms. Total surplus is close to the equilibrium level, because enhanced consumer surplus through lower prices is counteracted by occasional displacements of the most cost-efficient firm. (JEL C90, C72, D43, D83, L13) Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.
Quality-of-service (QoS) encompasses a wide range of
non-functional characteristics, including reliability, security, and
performance and is becoming increasingly important in business-critical
distributed systems. Such systems are increasingly deployed in open
networks, such as the Internet, where resource allocation and load
varies highly. To meet QoS requirements in such an environment, systems
need to be able to dynamically (re)configure and adapt to changing QoS
conditions. This paper describes a model for a QoS negotiation
mechanism. The model allows clients and servers in distributed object
systems to negotiate for QoS agreements involving multiple QoS
categories, such as performance, reliability, security, etc. The model
includes both a protocol that enables agents to negotiate and a
technique for calculating the worth of alternatives. The protocol
handles negotiations involving multiple offers and counter offers. It
evaluates an offer based on the absolute requirements for QoS levels and
their relative worth to the negotiating systems. The protocol and the
worth calculations are part of a QoS negotiation model that involves
simultaneous negotiation over multiple QoS categories. We describe how
negotiating applications communicate and evaluate offers. In addition,
we describe the functions the negotiation mechanism requires from its
environment. The protocol has been formally specified and simulated. We
are currently investigating implementation approaches and prototypes for
the full as well as simplified versions of the described model
Network delivery services providing "better-than-best-e#ort" service over the Internet are being studied, and are particularly necessary for multimedia applications. The selection and use of a specific delivery service involves negotiation between the user and the network; they agree upon specifications such as the type of service user packets will receive, the constraints the user tra#c must adhere to, and the price to be charged for the service. In this paper, we describe a protocol through which the user and the network (or two network domains) can negotiate network services. We refer to the protocol as a Resource Negotiation and Pricing protocol (RNAP). Through RNAP, the network service provider communicates availability of services and delivers price quotations and charging information to the user, and the user requests or re-negotiates services with desired specifications for one or more flows. RNAP protocol mechanisms are flexible enough to support multiple delivery service models, and allow dynamic re-negotiation of services during a session. Two di#erent network architectures are defined to support RNAP, a centralized architecture with a Network Resource Negotiator (NRN) administering each network domain, and a distributed architecture without any centralized controlling entity. Mechanisms are proposed for local price and charge computation, formulation of end-to-end prices and charges across multiple domains, and communication of this information through RNAP messages. Results of a prototype implementation are briefly described.
As the Internet makes the transition from research testbed to commercial enterprise, the topic of pricing in computer networks has suddenly attracted great attention. Much of the discussion in the network design community and the popular press centers on the usage-based vs. flat pricing debate. The more academic literature has largely focused on devising optimal pricing policies; achieving optimal welfare requires charging marginal congestion costs for usage. In this paper we critique this optimality paradigm on three grounds: (1) marginal cost prices may not produce sufficient revenue to fully recover costs and so are perhaps of limited relevance, (2) congestion costs are inherently inaccessible to the network and so cannot reliably form the basis for pricing, and (3) there are other, more structural, goals besides optimality, and some of these goals are incompatible with the global uniformity required for optimal pricing schemes. For these reasons, we contend that the rese...
Bandwidth brokers as proposed in the diffserv framework build on the process of setting up Service Level Agreements (SLA). This is a very static procedure, usually performed manually and based only on a simple description of the SLA. However, diffserv is suited to handle a more dynamic environment and to provide more than connectivity with its service classes. Our proposal enhances bandwidth brokers by including more significant information in SLAs such as the flow's destination network and pricing. In addition, we present a new per-hop behavior that supports flexible allocation of code points which is important to our approach. The system is targeted at large ISPs with good inter-connectivity. We implemented it on top of a flow-based simulation engine. The evaluation is based on parts of the current AS topology and characteristics of aggregated traffic. The results show an improvement of network utilization by up to 40% over a traditional, shortest-path routed inter-domain network for...
The Internet continues to evolve as it reaches out to a wider user population. The recent introduction of user-friendly navigation and retrieval tools for the World Wide Web has triggered an unprecedented level of interest in the Internet among the media and the general public, as well as in the technical community. It seems inevitable that some changes or additions are needed in the control mechanisms used to allocate usage of Internet resources. In this paper, we argue that a feedback signal in the form of a variable price for network service is a workable tool to aid network operators in controlling Internet traffic. We suggest that these prices should vary dynamically based on the current utilization of network resources. We show how this responsive pricing puts control of network service back where it belongs: with theusers. 1. Introduction A communications network is as good, or as bad, as its users perceive it to be. Network performance should therefore be measured in terms of...
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