A Smart Market for Resource Reservation in a Multiple Quality of Service Information Network

Abstract

The technology is nearly available to offer remarkably powerful new communications services: multiple streams, from multiple users, composed of different applications that require different qualities of service (QoS), all travelling over a single interconnected physical infrastructure. Society will benefit from integrated applications (video conferencing with interactive demos and shared whiteboards; computer-integrated telephony, etc.). However, we are a long way from from free, broadband, "anytime, anywhere" integrated services networks. Allocation of scarce resources in a multiple quality of service network may be the single greatest barrier to communications anytime, anywhere. In this paper I present a fairly general model of the problem, and, after showing that a decentralized open market will fail, I propose a "smart market" mechanism for solving the problem. The smart market implements simultaneously efficient routing and bandwidth allocation for reservations made in advance. As computing speed improves, the length of the advance reservation interval can be shortened.