A Bandwidth Market in an IP Network
Guy-Alain Lusilao-Zodi · SUNScholar (Stellenbosch University) · 2008
Consider a path-oriented telecommunications network where calls arrive to each route in a Poisson process.Each call brings on average a fixed number of packets that are offered to route.The packet inter-arrival times and the packet lengths are exponentially distributed.Each route can queue a finite number of packets while one packet is being transmitted.Each accepted packet/call generates an amount of revenue for the route manager.At specified time instants a route manager can acquire additional capacity ("interface capacity") in order to carry more calls and/or the manager can acquire additional buffer space in order to carry more packets, in which cases the manager earns more revenue; alternatively a route manager can earn additional revenue by selling surplus interface capacity and/or by selling surplus buffer space to other route managers that (possibly temporarily) value it more highly.We present a method for efficiently computing the buying and the selling prices of buffer space.Moreover, we propose a bandwidth reallocation scheme capable of improving the network overall rate of earning revenue at both the call level and the packet level.Our reallocation scheme combines the Erlang price [4] and our proposed buffer space price (M/M/1/K prices) to reallocate interface capacity and buffer space among routes.The proposed scheme uses local rules and decides whether or not to adjust the interface capacity and/or the buffer space.Simulation results show that the reallocation scheme achieves good performance when applied to a fictitious network of 30-nodes and 46-links based on the geography of Europe.List of Tables 6.5 The route length distribution for the network model . . . . . . . . . . . . .