Auction-Based Effective Bandwidth Allocation Mechanism

Abstract

Several auctions have been proposed and applied to perform contract negotiation and resource allocation in reservation-based networks. The methods proposed by these works perceive resources as single items with multiple units and place importance on a limited efficiency inside each node. However, as a user evaluates resources not individually, but rather as a whole set of required resources, the economical efficiency of the overall network cannot be achieved by these methods. To solve this problem, we propose a bandwidth allocation system using GVA (Generalised Vickrey Auction). Network resources, which are composed of many links at various bandwidths, are regarded by the proposed method as multiple items with multiple units. We describe how to apply GVA protocol to bandwidth allocations among multiple users. We investigate algorithmic and accounting problems inside multiple nodes using an end-to-end approach. We evaluate the proposed method's performance from various viewpoints: the utilisation of resources, profits of the telecommunications carriers, users' utility and users' satisfaction. We show that, by adopting GVA, the total utility of users can be maximised and the revenues of networks can also be improved.