Management of service level agreements for multimedia Internet service using a utility model

The efficient management of a quality level of Internet service is becoming increasingly important to both customers and service providers. This article describes how service level agreements for multimedia Internet service can be managed and controlled. We first present a literature survey on the problems of SLA management: SLA parameter definition, SLA measurement, and QoS management. We present a utility model to capture the management and control aspects of SLAs for multimedia Internet service. This utility model has been used in microeconomics theory, but here we have applied it to SLA management. This model provides a computationally feasible solution for admission control and quality adaptation for multimedia Internet service and SLA management. It also allows management policies to be flexibly expressed by service providers. Finally, we apply the utility model to the SLA management of VoIP service and describe how to use it for admission control, dynamic quality adaptation, and resource allocation for SLA assurance.