An approach to service provisioning with quality of service requirements in ATM networks

We present an approach to service provisioning with quality of service (QoS) requirements in ATM networks. The ATM network provides a set of services. Each service is characterized by its one way route, its resources (bandwidth and buffers) along the route, its input traffic constraints, and its provided QoS defined by the maximum percentage of cell loss and the maximum end-to-end cell delay. The network sets prices for its resources and users respond by requesting a resource allocation that guarantees their QoS requirements and maximizes a social welfare function consisting of the network's revenue and the users' surplus. The network adjusts the prices to maximize the welfare function and also to guarantee that the allocated resources do not exceed the available resources. Based on these prices, users request a new allocation and the network adjusts again the prices based on the new allocation. The above procedure is iterative and is shown to converge to an optimal resource allocation that maximizes the welfare function and satisfies the QoS requirements for the offered services, without exceeding the available resources. The service provisioning procedure has the following features: (i) the network needs to know only the average request rate for each type of service, their route and the resources requested by the users; (ii) users need to know only their private information (input traffic constraints and QoS requirements), their route, and the prices for resources announced by the network.