Layering the Inter-Domain Layer

Data transport services are flourishing at the intra-domain level. Despite that, things look much worse when we try to cross a domain boundary. Operators are endlessly tuning Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to achieve various traffic engineering goals [4], yet, unfortunately there is no easy way to allocate resources from point A to point B between two arbitrary domains on the Internet. Both work in the research community [9] [10] and the success of a virtual network operators (VNOs) such as Vanco [7] demonstrate the need for this type of function. Additionally, although capacity is ubiquitous and often over-provisioned, it is not exposed to market forces and it is not easy to sell. This paper proposes scalable protocol mechanisms for provisioning interdomain paths for buying and selling. Advanced interdomain scale services obviously pose some extreme challenges. The most pressing issues include: