Determining Differentiated Services Network Pricing Through Auctions

Over the years, quality of service (QoS) has attracted attention from researchers. How to guarantee QoS to customers despite the rapid change of the network status is the main concern. Pricing provides an effective economic means of congestion control and revenue generation. We examine pricing as an effective strategy for revenue management in DiffServ networks. In this paper, we propose an auction scheme to allocate network resources efficiently so as to maximize service provider’s revenue. We examine an auction mechanism that provides multiple options for customers to bid on the resources that they require as well as the price they are willing to pay. The service provider acts as an admission control unit in the sense of deciding the admission price and service provided for each class. We target the goal of maximizing a service provider’s revenue through auctions.