iREX: Efficient Inter-Domain QoS Policy Architecture

The inter-domain Resource Exchange (iREX) architecture uses economic market mechanisms to automate the deployment of end to end (E2E) inter-domain (ID) quality of service (QoS) policy among resource consumer and resource provider Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Previous simulation results have shown that iREX allows more coexisting ID policy deployments with less network congestion when compared to the existing method. In this paper we explore iREX’s network load distribution efficiency limits by comparing iREX’s performance to a lower bound for network congestion. We present an analytical model of iREX in terms of a min-cost flow problem, and numerical results of efficiency loss between iREX simulations and derived optimal solutions based on multi-commodity flow optimization models. Our results show that for nominal to high traffic loads of 50% or more, iREX deviates a maximum of approximately 30% from the derived lower bound, while the current method deviates a maximum of 350%.