Coordinating Allocation of Resources for Multiple Virtual IPTV Providers to Maximize Revenue

Network virtualization is seen by many as a key technology to help overcome some of the constraints of the current Internet architecture and help build a “human centric” Future Internet. As IPTV gains popularity, creating virtual networks for IPTV Service Providers can allow them to deploy specific protocol suites, routing algorithms and resource allocation strategies without affecting other IPTV providers that share the same underlying infrastructure. However, from the perspective of the underlying networking infrastructure provider (the “carrier”) virtualization presents new management challenges, in particular how to efficiently and fairly allocate available resources to multiple virtual networks. In this paper we describe a framework in which management systems associated with virtual IPTV provider networks communicate with the management system of the carrier to provide coordinated resource allocation. The proposed approach allows policy-based management systems to control a bio-inspired resource management mechanism, based on species competition for biological systems, that a carrier can use to allocate resources to competing IPTV providers in a manner that maximizes the carrier's revenue. Results of a simulation study are presented, which show that this approach outperforms uncoordinated virtual network management approaches.