Priority pricing in utility fair networks

Abstract

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 control techniques. Finally, we develop online control strategies and implement them in a user agent (UA) that automatically scales the utilities.