Multi Level Pricing for Service Differentiation and Congestion Control in Communication Networks

Abstract

A desirable property of any system is that if a user is ready to pay for a specific level of service, the system should be able to meet his requirement. Currently, Internet does not provide a standard mechanism to price its resources. A multi level pricing scheme is proposed to reflect the hierarchical structure of the Internet, care being taken to ensure that it requires minimal changes to the Internet protocols. Data statistics are maintained as an aggregate, thus reducing the load on intermediate routers in the Internet. The proposed mechanism performs the dual functions of providing service differentiation according to budgets, and doing congestion control through feedback at time scale comparable to a round trip time. We investigate stability issues of the multi level pricing scheme. Simulation results for the different traffic scenarios show that the proposed pricing model increases the aggregate user utility function while adequately responding to congestion and providing service differentiation.