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George Fankhauser
Bernhard Plattner
fgfa, plattnerg@tik.ee.ethz.ch
Abstract
also expand their geographical scope (MCI/Alternet, for example, has more than 1100 connections to other ASes).
Recent work on Bandwidth Brokers focuses mainly on service provisioning between peer ISPs. Although routing and pricing issues
are also important aspects of a contract between ASes (autonomous
systems) they are usually not treated as an integral part of Bandwidth brokers. Adding these features to a Bandwidth Broker can
transform a simple negotiation into a market-like process. In this
paper we discuss such a form of an advanced Bandwidth Broker
called Service Level Agreement Trader (SLA Trader).
Building on recent studies of temporal and spatial trafc behavior at the inter-AS level we discuss where such SLA Traders are
most benecially placed. Trafc patterns exhibit considerable longterm uctuations and spatial distribution with hot-spots. These variations in demand and the high connectivity between ASes in the
core of the Internet could form the base for a vibrant ISP market.
Keywords: Bandwidth broker, service level agreement, interdomain routing, service provisioning, differentiated services, network resource pricing, mini-market.
1 Introduction
changes to the network are not as well known. They mainly include:
edge of the network, large ISPs at the backbone tree (core) only
Only the base mechanisms and some basic forwarding types are de-
ASes (only one link to another AS) its even 6.1 [Moat 1999].
nen et al. 1999; Jacobson et al. 1999]. This gives a great degree of
freedom to ISPs how services are provided, with which peers they
interconnect, how they route trafc and what prices are applied.
out-degree1
out-degree is dened as
2edges
nodes
A
DS
Domain A
DS
Domain B
DS
Domain C
Access
Network
and partly of resources that were bought by this ISP itself from
Core Network
DS
Domain E
DS
Domain F
a
99
DS
Domain D
the service through their network including the outgoing link from
gf
19
its egress nodes to the next AS. For example, consider the four ISPs
A, B, C and E from Figure 1. B may offer services with destination
E to A if B has bought service with destination E itself from C (or,
form of SLAs build up in a nested manner providing nally an endto-end4 service. Cost and delay increase at each ISP (additive met-
ric) along the path while the bandwidth metric is concave and stays
Service provisioning
long-term goal) replace todays SLA setup solutions that are pro-
ble service setup delay. However, we can avoid such delays through
native peers for same service and same destinations. Rather than
for business purposes with a high service expectation we focus furMoreover, customers ex-
ing systems. [Blake et al. 1998] denes the SLA term as A service
3.
SLA trading protocols and the traders itself may change from
laxed form, SLAs may also describe services that do not have an
sically, what ISPs offer to peers are network resources that consist
This is for example planned as the second phase for the Internet 2 Bandwidth
Brokers [Neilson et al. 1999]
3
This means in practice, we carry best-effort trafc using the same mechanisms as
today: FIFO queuing, shortest path routing and at-rate pricing
4
5
the ISPs Diffserv domain. For the time being we assume traders to
(c) AS topology.
be centralized for each AS. SLA traders make local decisions about
what services are provided to which peers. Such decisions may be
ISPs are often used for simulations. However, traces provide only a
SLA, an ISP may build new services out of the existing ones. The
[Fang and Peterson 1999]. About 90% of the so called jumbo ows
price for such a service is the sum of the SLA price offered by the
peer plus the cost of the ISPs own resource. Or, if all the nesting is
uncoiled, the sum of all local prices set by all ISPs involved.
may compare offers made by all the peers. Usually the best offer,
compared to the tness of the service and the price will be taken.
by regulation. In general, only policies about the peer ISPs are expressible
7.
lower risks, and to exploit the ISPs very own business strategy.
30s). Sec-
gated Internet trafc (e.g. [Paxson 1997b], and many others). From
these models fast and plausible synthesis methods for this type of
10000
1000
Class 3 Smaller
regional networks
5% of ASes, 7 < dv < 22
data set
log interpolation
1000
# of ASes
Outdegree
10
10
1
Data Source: moats (12/98)
10
100
1000
0.1
200
400
1999 gfa
(a) AS classication.
600
800
1000
Outdegree
AS index
(c) Histogram.
another
form the core of the Internet where each AS has at least 20 con-
ing function we chose the residual bandwidth function for our rst
market.
4 Mini-Markets
not equal to distance here. Any form of added network value may
(outdegree
mission control can be applied (e.g. auctions set prices and pick
another
access networks).
10
Domains of out-degree 2 still have a service option in buying resources but not for
the case of selling or reselling.
1200
price
protocols.
Resource allocation for jumbo ows: Inter-AS trafc ows
are high volume and still time variant. SLA trading provides
the framework to optimize these allocations.
5 An Experimental Approach
how simple pricing functions affect the path selection and service
provisioning.
speed, same price function) the shortest path (2 hops) is also the
cheapest. When demand increases the price for the shortest path in-
creases also until the initially unattractive longer path (3 hops) be-
comes competitive and is nally selected too. Figure 5(a) ff. show
the selected paths, price and bandwidth of such a simple setup. De-
u0
1
u0 .
2
is a certain granularity of SLAs. Implementations exhibit quantization of demand (cf. Figure 5(e)).
1997a; Moat 1999]. Since an analytical model, even for single com-
[Fang and Peterson 1999] FANG , W. AND P ETERSON , L. InterAS Trafc Patterns and Their Implications. In Global Internet
AND
as follows:
Technology, Computer Engineering and Networks Lab, Technical Report No. 59. November 1999.
AND
700000
price
500000
Bandwidth [bps]
p*
3p
400000
300000
200000
2p
100000
u1
u2
u1
u2
1e+06
1.5e+06
Time [us]
2e+06
2.5e+06
1999.
[Moat 1999] Moat.
number. http://moat.nlanr.net/AS/background.
D.
AND
A Discussion of
Council: http://www.merit.edu/working.groups/
[Nichols et al. 1998] N ICHOLS , K., B LAKE , S., BAKER , F., AND
AND
K.,
JACOBSON ,
V.,
AND