Abstract
Generally Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have charged their customers flat fees for their Internet connections. This has resulted in frequent congestion for many users. There are many different approaches to address this problem. Effective utilization of scarce resources is important to managers in the telecommunications industry, and thus usage-based pricing has become an important tool to address this problem—since it does not require large capital expenditures. In this paper we develop an ex-post charging mechanism based on the effective bandwidth concept. This model, effectively characterizes the utilization and burstiness of a user in a single metric. Further, we introduce a novel market for buffer size. In this market users purchase a specific buffer size from their ISP. Our model directs users with bursty traffic to purchase larger buffers, while users with well-behaved traffic are directed to purchase smaller buffers. From a resource usage standpoint, this is also the appropriate decision. We conduct computational experiments to show the viability of this approach, and also discuss real-world implementation issues.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bailey, J. P., Nagel, J., and Raghavan, S. (2006). Ex-post internet charging. In McKnight, L. W. and Wroclawski, J., editors, Internet Services: The Economics of Quality of Service in Networked Markets. MIT Press. to appear.
Besen, S. M., Spigel, J. S., and Srinagesh, P. (2002). Evaluating the competitive effects of mergers of internet backbone providers. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), 2(3): 187–204.
Blumenthal, M. S. and Clark, D. D. (2001). Rethinking the design of the internet: the end-to-end arguments vs. the brave new world. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), 1(1):70–109.
Courcoubetis, C., Kelly, F. P., and Weber, R. (2000). Measurement-based usage charges in communications networks. Operations Research, 48(4):535–548.
Courcoubetis, C., Siris, V. A., and Stamoutis, G. D. (1998). Integration of pricing and flow-control for available bit rate services in atm networks. In IEEE Globecom’ 96, pages 644–648. London, UK.
Falkner, M., Devetsikiotis, M., and Lambadaris, I. (1999). Cost based traffic shaping: A user’s perspective on connection admission control. In IEEE ICC.
Guérin, H., Ahmadi, H., and Naghshineh, M. (1991). Equivalent capacity and its application to bandwidth allocation in high speed networks. IEEE J. Selected Areas Communications, 9(7):968–981.
IHR (2006). Internet health report http://www.internelpulse.net/. Technical report, Keynote Systems.
ITR (2006). Internet traffic report. Technical report. http://www.internettrafficreport.com/.
Kelly, F. P. (1996). Notes on effective bandwidths in Stochastic Networks: Theory and Applications Telecommunication Networks, volume 4, pages 141–168, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Kelly, F. P. (1997). Charging and accounting for bursty connections, in internet economics. In McKnight, Lee W. and Bailey, Joseph P., editors, Internet Economics, pages 253–278. MIT Press.
Low, S. H., Paganini, F., and Doyle, J. C. (2002). Internet congestion control. IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 22(1):28–43.
MacKie-Mason, K. and Varian, H. R. (1995). Pricing congestible network resources. IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications, 13(7):1141–149.
McKnight, L. W. and Bailey, J. P., editors (1997). Internet Economics. MIT Press.
Micheel, J., Graham, I., and Brownlee, N. (2001). The Auckland data set: an access link observed. In I4th ITC Specialists Seminar on Access Networks and Systems. Catalonia, Spain.
Mills, D. L. (1989). Measured performance of the network time protocol in the internet system. Technical Report RFC-1128. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1128.html.
Odlyzko, A. (2001). Internet pricing and the history of communications. Computer Networks, 517:493–517.
Odlyzko. A. M. (2003), Internet traffic growth: Sources and implications. Technical report, University of Minnesota. Available at http://www.dtc.umn.edu/publications/publications.php.
Rupp, B., Edell, R., Chand, H., and Varaiya, P. (1998). Index: A platform for determining how people value the quality of their internet access. In 6th IEEE/IFIP International Workshop on Quality of Service, pages 85–90.
Shenker, S., Clark, D., Estrin, D., and Herzog, S. (1996). Pricing in computer networks: Reshaping the research agenda. ACM Computational Comm. Review, pages 19–43.
Siris, V. A., Songhurst, D. J., Stamoulis, G. D., and Stoer, M. (1999). Usage-based charging using effective bandwidths: studies and reality. In 16th International Teletraffic Congress (ITC-I6).
Srikant, R. (2004). The Mathematics of Internet Congestion Control (Systems and Control: Foundations and Applications). SpringerVerlag.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bailey, J.P., Gamvros, I., Raghavan, S. (2007). Ex-Post Internet Charging: An Effective Bandwidth Model. In: Baker, E.K., Joseph, A., Mehrotra, A., Trick, M.A. (eds) Extending the Horizons: Advances in Computing, Optimization, and Decision Technologies. Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series, vol 37. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-48793-9_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-48793-9_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-48790-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-48793-9
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)