Market Managed Multi-service Internet (M3I)
Table of content of the project description:
Introduction
M3I is a European Union (EU) project in the 5th Framework of
the IST-Program. It is funded for the Swiss partner ETH Zürich,
TIK by the Bundesamt füur Bildung und Wissenschaft (BBW) in Bern,
Switzerland. The official project identifications are IST-1999-11429
for the EU and 99.0536 for the BBW.
Official Project Pages
The official M3I project's web page
for the project partners is maintained by HP Europen Labs.
With proper project authorization check the private M3I project web
page (for M3I members only).
Project Overview
Project M3I — Market-Managed Multi-service Internet — aims
to design, implement and trial a next-generation system that will
enable Internet resource management through market forces,
specifically by enabling differential charging for multiple levels of
service. The capabilities created by M3I create will increase the
value of Internet services to customers through greater choice over
price and quality, and reduced congestion. For the network provider,
flexibility will be improved, management complexity reduced and hence
revenues will increase. Price-based resource management pushes
intelligence and hence complexity to the edges of the network,
ensuring the same scalability and simplicity of the current
Internet. A trial system will be designed and experimented with. It
will enable ISPs to explore sophisticated charging options and
business models with their customers.
Measurable Improvements for End Users
- the ability to instantaneously increase
quality of service (QoS) by accepting different charging
rates;
- more effective
competition in a differentiated services market;
- real-time feedback and validation of
charges.
Measurable Improvements for ISPs
- the ability to change tariffs and
easily communicate them to the end users within seconds;
- the ability to hold current QoS in the
presence of bad congestion effects by communicating price changes
in real-time to customers;
- the
ability to charge differentially for applications requiring
differing QoS levels, or multicast.
Project Objectives
Using the above platform, we will show to what
extent:
- the demand for Internet services,
including various QoS levels can be managed effectively through a
pricing mechanism;
- customers can
flexibly access both high and low quality services, depending on their
particular application needs, instead of being limited to a single
best-effort service as in the current Internet;
- end users in corporate organisations can exercise
similar choice, but constrained by the policy of the party that is
paying;
- ISPs can recover the costs of
new services, such as voice and video, that are currently provided by
different infrastructures, and hence increase social efficiency by
exploiting economies of multiplexing and scale, which in turn will
also provide for increased network revenue;
- simple and scalable extensions to current
technology can provide the correct incentives for the economically
efficient and uncongested operation of the Internet.
Analysis will be performed to show the global
stability, fairness and profitability of differential charging and the
efficient operation and management of the network, both at the
transport and service level.