A design framework towards the profitable operation of service overlay networks

We present in this paper a generic design framework towards the profitable operation of a service overlay network (SON) that aims to assure inter-domain quality of services (QoS). Revealing some involved NP-hard topological design tasks, we work out efficient heuristic methods for the practical implementation of the proposed framework. The efficiency of the developed heuristic methods is tested and confirmed with extensive scrutinies and benchmarks, based on many input scenarios and comparative assessments. We also demonstrate the revenue benefits the SON operator can get in case of following our framework. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.