Pricing framework for a differential services Internet

A number of recent proposals and proposed standards have addressed adding d ifferential services to the Internet. Although their details and tentative implementations differ,most are recommending what essentially amounts to mu ltiple levels of best-effort service. In this paper, we survey recent diffe rential services and pricing proposals and introduce a pricing framework fo r a differentiated-services network that focuses on simplicity, flexibility , and ease of implementation. In particular, our model can be used in the c urrent heterogeneous Internet without major restructuring. We focus on flat -rate, per-time and usage-based pricing, where users can change their servi ce level on an ad-hoc basis. We also show that a sender-pays model with bac k-charging is simple to implement and can be effective even in complicated transactions, such as multicasting. Our approach is different from many pre vious proposals and consciously integrates differential services and pricin g with implementation as the immediate goal. Finally, we outline future are as of research including ISP support for pricing, the dynamics of service q uality and pricing in a differentiated Internet, and the latest trends and directions of QoS deployment and standardization.