The optimal admission & adaptation of service level agreements in packet networks : applying the utility model
Date
2000
Authors
Watson, Robert
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Abstract
Khan considered the problem of optimal allocation of the resources of a single server, while meeting the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of users' multimedia sessions. He showed how the problem could be mapped onto a variant of the combinatorial Knapsack Problem, with server utility (e.g. revenue) as the quantity to be optimized and with the user QoS requirements expressed as constraints on the resource allocation. He gave both optimal (algorithmic) and fast but suboptimal (heuristic) methods to solve the resulting Multidimensional Multiconstraint Knapsack Problem (MMKP).
In this thesis we apply Khan's general approach to the problem of optimal allocation of the resources of a packet network to requests for network service (called Service Level Agreements or SLAs) to support multimedia sessions - subject to session QoS constraints, expressed as constraints on the data rates and latencies experienced by sessions.
New problems arising from a number of interesting differences between Khan's server problem and our packet network problem are articulated and dealt with. The resulting heuristic solution technique has been implemented as a Java-based program for the optimal admission and QoS adaptation of Service Level Agreements in a packet network. Preliminary performance data and suggestions for further work are given.