ICC: An incentive-compatible inter-cloud communication traffic management mechanism

In this paper we introduce the Inter-Cloud Communication Traffic Management mechanism (ICC). ICC performs rate control over the ISP transit link(s) aiming to attain a target reduction of transit cost. ICC reduces ISPs transit charge by shaping a portion of the inter-domain traffic (e.g. delay-tolerant inter-cloud traffic), which has been marked as time-shiftable by the traffic source, i.e. by the business customer of the ISP such as a cloud/data center. In particular, ICC reduces the transmission rate of marked traffic at peak 5-min billable intervals and increases it at off-peak, acting at even shorter timescales according to a novel rate-adaptation algorithm. We evaluate numerically ICC by employing real traffic traces. The results reveal that ICC can significantly reduce the ISP transit charge and thus can be a promising and practically applicable solution for ISPs while also being beneficial for their customers whom the ISP should incentivize by sharing its savings.