We study the problem faced by a wireless service provider (SP) when offering a “sponsored content” service to multiple content providers (CPs). Each CP specifies the value that it would obtain from additional content views together with estimates on the underlying demand for its content. The SP then determines which CPs should sponsor their content along with the price for doing so. This basic framework has been studied in a variety of different contexts in recent years. However, previous work typically assumes that the CP parameters are reported truthfully to the SP. Another common assumption is that each CP has an independent traffic stream, i.e. there is no notion of competition between CPs in similar markets. In this work we address both of these issues. We present a pricing scheme that optimizes SP profit subject to CPs being incentivized to reveal their valuation and number of potential views in a truthful manner. We also examine how the model is affected if CPs in the same market are vying to sponsor a common pool of content.

We consider the problem of optimal rate allocation and admission control for adaptive video streaming sessions in wireless networks with user dynamics. The central aim is to achieve an optimal tradeoff between several key objectives: maximizing the average rate utility per user, minimizing the temporal rate variability, and maximizing the number of users supported. We derive sample path upper bounds for the long-term net utility rate in terms of either a linear program or a concave optimization problem, depending on whether the admissible rate set is discrete or continuous. We then show that the upper bounds are asymptotically achievable in large-scale systems by policies which either deny access to a user or assign it a fixed rate for its entire session, without relying on any advance knowledge of the duration. Moreover, the asymptotically optimal policies exhibit a specific structure, which allow them to be characterized through just a single variable, and have the further property that the induced offered load is unity. We exploit the latter insights to devise parsimonious online algorithms for learning and tracking the optimal rate assignments and establish the convergence of these algorithms. Extensive simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithms perform well, even in relatively small-scale systems.

We consider the problem of optimal rate allocation and admission control for adaptive video streaming sessions in wireless networks with user dynamics. The central aim is to achieve an optimal tradeoff between several key objectives: maximizing the average rate utility per user, minimizing the temporal rate variability, and maximizing the number of users supported. We identify the structure of algorithms that achieve asymptotically optimal performance in large-capacity systems, and exploit the insight into this structure to devise parsimonious and robust online algorithms. Extensive simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed online algorithms perform well, even in systems with relatively small capacity.

The interaction of a content provider with end users on an infrastructure platform built and maintained by a service provider can be viewed as a two-sided market. Content sponsoring, i.e., charging the content provider instead of viewers for resources consumed in viewing the content, can benefit all parties involved. Without being charged directly or having it counted against their monthly data quotas, end users will view more content, allowing the content provider to generate more advertising revenue, extracted by the service provider to subsidize its investment and operation of the network infrastructure. However, realizing such gains requires a proper contractual relationship between the service provider and content provider. We consider the determination of this contract through a Stackelberg game. The service provider sets a pricing schedule for sponsoring and the content provider responds by deciding how much content to sponsor. We analyze the best strategies for the content provider and service provider in the event that the underlying demand for the content is uncertain. Two separate settings are defined. In the first, end users can be charged for non-sponsored views on a per-byte basis. In the second we extend the model to the more common case in which end users purchase data quotas on a periodic basis. Our main conclusion is that a coordinating contract can be designed that maximizes total system profit. Moreover, the additional profit due to sponsoring can be split between the content provider and service provider in an arbitrary manner.

This paper introduces a framework for answering questions regarding the conditions on the network load that allow a best-effort network like the Internet to support connections of given duration that require a certain quality of service. Such quality of service is expressed in terms of the percentage of time the bandwidth allocated to a connection may drop below a certain level or the maximum allowable delay in placing the call through the network waiting for more favorable loading conditions. The call-acceptance conditions, which depend on the behavior of the system over the lifetime of accepted calls, are thus based on transient models for the congestion (instead of looking at the average behavior) and attempt to exploit the time-scales of the fluctuations of the number of connections competing for bandwidth. Extensions of the model consider the case of dynamic pricing which allows connections that pay more to get larger shares of the bandwidth, and investigate the trade-off between quality of service, the size of the acceptance region, and the charge to be paid by the connection. Under this framework we introduce an option contract that reduces the risk of quality disruption, if a user has a fixed budget at his disposal, and calculate its price. One potential use of this methodology is towards developing a simple admission control mechanism for placing voice calls through an IP network, where the decisions can be taken by edge devices.

The design of connection admission control (CAC) for a simple Markovian model of a multiservice statistical multiplexer is considered. The paper begins by laying the foundation through several fundamental analytic concepts, such as a semi-Markov decision process formulation of the design problem and time scale decomposition, before progressively leading up to real-world requirements, like robustness and simplicity of design. Several numerical illustrations are given. The salient contributions of the paper are as follows. (1) A unified treatment of multiclass cell and call QoS. (2) A CAC design which is robust, fair, and efficient. (3) Simplicity in the CAC design, together with an evaluation of the tradeoff with performance. (4) An analytic technique for computing the feasibility region in the space of call arrival rates where some control exists to satisfy QoS. (5) The discovery of near linearity of the boundary of the feasible region, which is then used to decompose the design problem. (6) A unified treatment of aggressive and conservative forms of CAC, the latter being conventional and the former yielding better call level performance. (7) An effective bandwidth definition based on the aggressive form of CAC, which influences the CAC design. (8) A demonstration of the beneficial impact on performance of cell level control. (9) An asymptotic theory of the joint behavior of cell loss and call blocking. (10) A rigorous development of time scale decomposition. (11) A numerical evaluation of the accuracy of the notion of nearly completely decomposable Markov chains.

We analyze the concurrent-read exclusive-write protocol for access to a shared resource, such as occurs in database and distributed operating systems. Readers arrive according to a Poisson process and acquire shareable i.e., non-exclusive, locks which, once granted, are released after a generally distributed random period. Writers arrive according to an arbitrary renewal process and acquire exclusive locks which, once granted, are held for a random time which is also generally distributed. Locks are granted in the order in which requests are received.We derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which the queue is stable i.e., the Iatencies for reader/writer lock acquisition have a limiting distribution. In the unstable case, the delays of successive readers/writers become unbounded. The stability condition is sensitive to the interarrival-time distribution of the writers and the lock holding-time distribution of the readers but depends only on the mean lock holding-time of the writers.Distributional and moment bounds are given for the latencies of read/write requests.

The steady-state behavior of open queuing systems with Poisson arrival processes in light traffic, that is, as the arrival rate tends to zero, is considered. Expressions are provided for the derivatives with respect to the arrival rate of various quantities of interest (such as moments of steady-state sojourn times and queue lengths), evaluated at an arrival rate of zero. These expressions are obtained using the regenerative structure of the queuing system and a change-of-measure formula based on likelihood ratios. The derivatives, which can be used in interpolation approximations, can be evaluated analytically in simple cases and by simulation in general.>

Resource sharing systems, such as database management systems, utilize various types of locking to maintain consistency. Most locking mechanisms cause some resources to remain idle at certain times when there is work for them to do, inducing a decrease in the system’s capacity. This decrease of capacity is reflected in the stability condition for the locking system as compared to the system without locking. We consider the following locking system. There are N servers operating in parallel and two types of incoming customers. The first type corresponds to simple customers, i.e., customers with no locking requirements, and the second corresponds to customers that have to be processed simultaneously by all N servers. When a server is ready to serve such a customer, it has to wait until all servers are ready to serve that same customer. We determine a necessary and sufficient condition for stability of this system, which can be expressed in terms of the mean of the maximum of N random variables, each representing the amount of work due to simple customers arriving at a station between successive locking customers. For a particular case we provide an asymptotic analysis which indicates that the wasted capacity in such a system grows as $\log N$.

A network is defined as an undirected graph and a routing which consists of a collection of simple paths connecting every pair of vertices in the graph. The forwarding index of a network is the maximum number of paths passing through any vertex in the graph. Thus it corresponds to the maximum amount of forwarding done by any node in a communication network with a fixed routing. For a given number of vertices, each having a given degree constraint, we consider the problem of finding networks that minimize the forwarding index. Forwarding indexes are calculated' for cube networks and generalized de Bruijn networks. General bounds are derived which show that de Bruijn networks are asymptotically optimal. Finally, efficient techniques for building large networks with small forwarding indexes out of given component networks are presented and analyzed.

In this paper we focus on the storage resource. A basic model of the space time requirements of jobs in a computer system is described, and a number of its variations analyzed by means of diffusion approxmiations. Subject to the usual heavy traffic assumptions, the result of this analysis enable one to quantify the effects of limitations on both storage capacity and processing rates.