A Mechanism for Pricing Service Guarantees

The calculus of deterministic constraints on service and traffic streams offers a rich language to specify service guarantees. In particular, the service curve earliest deadline first (SCED) algorithm has an associated feasibility test given by linear constraints. Users sending streams of data through the server may have differing needs for delay and throughput. We suggest a way based on utility function maximization, subject to the linear constraints of the SCED algorithm, for allocation of service. In addition, a generalization of the SCED algorithm is given which does not require that the deadline sequences within streams be monotone nondecreasing.