Tariffs and Traffic

Frank Kelly

15th International Teletraffic Congress,
Washington D.C., 24 June 1997

The reliable operation of a public multiservice broadband network raises design issues both within the subnetworks run by individual network operators, and at the interfaces between these subnetworks. Some of these issues are of an engineering nature, concerning stability and control over fast timescales. Others are of an economic nature, involving coordination between distinct commercial entities. In future networks the intelligence embedded in end-systems, acting on behalf of users, is likely to lessen the distinction between engineering and economic issues. We illustrate the resulting interactions between tariffs and traffic with a discussion of a few specific topics: characterization effort for guaranteed services, routing procedures initiated by end-systems, and rate control algorithms for elastic traffic.

Further Reading