Objective
The present position whereby Internet Service Providers (ISP) charge a flat rate for access to undifferentiated service levels and meet demand through over-provision of capacity does not represent a sustainable business model. As basic access and simple services become commoditised ISPs will differentiate across a wide range of sophisticated services and business models.
This project will design and prototype a system that can charge and account for multiple levels of Internet service, and analyse the implications of so doing. The project intends to demonstrate the feasibility of managing the allocation of Internet resources using direct market forces. Feasibility will be established in technical and commercial terms. This includes requirements analysis, engineering design and prototyping, cost and business modelling, and Internet market modelling. The result will be a fully operating prototype that will enable market trials.
Objectives:
The objective of this project is to design, implement and trial a next-generation system which will enable Internet resource management through market forces, specifically by enabling differential charging for multiple levels of service. Offering this capability will increase the value of Internet services to the customers through greater choice over price and quality, and reduced congestion. For the network provider, flexibility will be improved, management complexity reduced and hence revenues will increase. The above price-based resource management pushes intelligence and hence complexity to the edges of the network, ensuring the scalability and simplicity of the current Internet.
Work description:
We believe that the present position whereby Internet Service Providers charge a flat rate for access to undifferentiated service levels and meet demand through over-provision of capacity, does not represent a sustainable business model. As basic access and simple services become commoditised ISPs will differentiate across a wide range of sophisticated services and business models. This project will design and prototype a system that can charge and account for multiple levels of Internet service, and analyse the implications of so doing. We believe that this is critically important for the industry.
We intend to demonstrate the feasibility of managing the allocation of Internet resources using relatively direct market forces. Feasibility will be established in technical and commercial terms. This includes requirements analysis, engineering design and prototyping, cost and business modelling, and Internet market modelling. The result will be a fully operating prototype that will enable market trials.
By Dec 2001 (the end of a two-year project) we will demonstrate relatively sophisticated applications reacting to economic signals from the Internet and report our understanding of typical customer reaction and the effect on total system performance.
Milestones:
Major Milestones are planned to coincide with the External Reviews of the Project.
External Review 1 (6 months) - Finalised Requirements and Architecture Definition
Review 2 (12 months) - Prototype software modules for monitoring exist, models (Cost, Business, Internet Market Response) created and implemented in software
Review 3 (18 months) - Trial system built, trials of user and network response in progress
Review 4 (24 months) - All trials and experiment results available.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
BRACKNELL
United Kingdom