Internet Tiered Services: Theory, Economics, and Quality of Service (Hardcover)

This book provides a theoretical framework for reasoning about and pricing Internet tiered services, as well as a practical toolset for network providers to develop customized menus of service offerings. Internet service providers (ISPs) have introduced several forms of a tiered service, in which users may select from a small set of tiers that offer progressively higher levels of service with a corresponding increase in price. The material provides a comprehensive study of the design, sizing, pricing, and operation of Internet tiered services. It also addresses the following issues: optimization of service tier selection and sizing, economic models for optimal pricing of service tiers, models for optimizing “bundles of services”, and applications of tiered services in simplifying important QoS functions in the network, including fair packet scheduling.