Contract Theory-Based Customized Service Scheduling for Predictable QoS in WANs

Service Customized Networking (SCN) is emerging as an escalating technological trend to address the personalized requirements of services, which are plagued in traditional “best-effort” transmission networks. Organically coordinating heterogeneous domains in Wide Area Networks (WANs) is essential for establishing end-to-end customized service delivery. However, the peer-to-peer centralized communication mode between Au-tonomous Domains (ADs) hinders their connectivity and makes it challenging to support diverse intra-domain routing protocols for the desired Quality of Service (QoS). To achieve customized service scheduling for predictable QoS in WANs, we propose a contract theory-based incentive mechanism. In specific, we first select trusted ADs with high service qualities by computing their reputations through a subjective logic model. The Service Provider (SP) decomposes the overall QoS requirements by domains logically from a global perspective. These decomposed QoS metrics will splice differentiated service capabilities from ADs to obtain the expected end-to-end connection. To address information asymmetry between the SP and ADs, we formulate contribution-reward contract items and devise an optimization problem of maximizing the whole system utility. The optimal contract problem is solved through constraints of individual rationality and incentive compatibility. Simulation results indi-cate the feasibility and effectiveness of our scheme on service customization and economic benefits.