Priority Pricing in Utility Fair Networks

This paper deals with a new pricing approach in utility fair networks, where the user’s application is associated with a utility function. We allow users to have concave as well as non-concave utility functions. Bandwidth is allocated such that utility values of applications are shared fairly. In this work, we derive a fairness measure for utility functions that takes their specific shape into account. Based on this fairness measure, we present a simple pricing mechanism: the user announces his utility function and the network charges in accordance with the fairness measure. Then, we apply our pricing mechanism to a content provider’s network. In our model, customers want to scale their utilities to achieve their goals (e.g. file download, multimedia streaming) in a cost optimal way. In this regard, we formulate a download problem with predefined deadline as an optimal control problem and account for dynamic changes of the state of congestion by using (online) model predictive ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ICNP
• Authors: Tobias Harks, Tobias Poschwatta
• Keywords: Fairness Measure, ICNP 2005, Network Protocols, Utility Fair Networks, Utility Function