Approximated Price Functions for Dynamic Volume-based Pricing of Multiclass Internet Traffic
Peter Reichl · 1999
This paper investigates the calculation of functions that describe the price to be paid for using an Internet link depending on its current utilization. After presenting an approach which is valid for the case of traffic consisting of two classes with different priorities, it is demonstrated how the multiclass problem (traffic consisting of more than two classes) may be reduced towards a sequence of two-class problems. Moreover, an efficient approximation method for normalization constants of Markov processes allows the solution of such two-class problems even for the high link capacities available in today's Internet. 1 Introduction Within the last few years, pricing Internet traffic has become a research area of rapidly growing interest. Current efforts to develop a charging and accounting platform for integrated services Internet traffic [1] have led to the search for a pricing model that is suitable for being implemented under a resource reservation protocol like RSVP [2]. Among ...