Simple and efficient pricing mechanisms for multi-service networks

Abstract

This paper presents a fully distributed simple and efficient pricing mechanism that combines admission control for QoS traffic with pricing policies for both best-effort and QoS traffic. Using readily available network measurements, we show how near-optimal pricing policies can be obtained for resource allocation between QoS and best-effort traffic. One of the advantages of our scheme is that it is ex-ante, meaning that the price structure does not change after service has begun.