Price-based quality-of-service control framework for two-class network services

This paper presents a price-based quality-of-service (QoS) control framework for two-class network services, in which circuit-switched and packet-switched services are defined as "premium service class" and "best-effort service class," respectively. Given the service model, a customer may decide to use the other class as a perfect or an imperfect substitute when he or she perceives the higher utility of the class. Given the framework, fixed-point problems are solved numerically to investigate how static pricing can be used to control the demand and the QoS of each class. The rationale behind this is as follows: For a network service provider to determine the optimal prices that maximize its total revenue, the interactions between the QoS-dependent demand and the demand-dependent QoS should be thoroughly analyzed. To test the robustness of the proposed model, simulations were performed with gradually increasing customer demands or network workloads. The simulation results show that even with substantial demands or workloads, self-adjustment mechanism of the model works and it is feasible to obtain fixed points in equilibrium. This paper also presents a numerical example of guaranteeing the QoS statistically in the short term-that is, through the implementation of pricing strategies.