Integration of pricing models between best-effort and guaranteed performance services in telecommunication networks

Starting from the mid-1990s, a growing attention has been devoted to more and more sophisticate pricing models for telecommunication services. A number of pricing models have been proposed and analyzed in the context of quality of service (QoS) guaranteed networks and, more recently, also for best effort (BE) environments. Concerning QoS networks, the optimization often influences the call admission control (CAC). In a BE network, where users do not declare QoS parameters and there is no CAC, the pricing policies should be integrated within the flow control and they are different from those adopted in the QoS environments. In this paper we investigate the condition where both BE traffic and traffic explicitly requiring QoS (guaranteed performance, GP) are present. We propose three mechanisms that influence both GP CAC and BE flow control and that are aimed at maximizing the overall revenue for all traffic classes. Moreover, we want to investigate the influence of the BE Pricing scheme on the GP traffic in order to establish a bound for the Internet Service Provider on the prices imposed to the GP users. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.