Abstract
Ever since its inception, the Internet has seen unprecedented growth. Consequently, researchers have been actively looking for means and ways to influence the behavior of its selfish users. Pricing was soon realized as the regulatory tool to provide proper incentives so that users' self-interest will lead them to modify their usage according to their needs. This leads to better overall network utilization and enhanced users' satisfaction. In this work, a scalable pricing framework for QoS capable networks supporting real time, adjustable real time, and non-real time traffic is studied. The scheme, which belongs to usage-based methods, is independent of the underlying network and the mechanisms for QoS provisioning. The framework is credit-based ensuring the fairness, comprehensibility, and predictability of usage cost. On the other hand, it provides means for the network providers to ensure, with high probability, cost recovery and profit, competitiveness of prices, and encouragement of client behaviors that will enhance the network's efficiency. This is achieved by appropriate charging mechanisms and suitable incentives. The implementation and usage costs of the framework are low. Simulation results suggest that users have better overall satisfaction; better network utilization is achieved while reduced call blocking probability is observed.