Investigation and Documentation of Economic Network Management Approaches for Overlay Networks and Systems

This work will investigate, document, and compare approaches on Economic Traffic Management (ETM) mechanisms for overlay networks and systems. It includes the reading of known material and so far unlisted/unknown material to be searched for. The thesis needs to bring ETM into the model to achieve a win-win situation for both roles: providers gain an optimized traffic or a lower cost, users gain a better performance or a lower price.

The thesis has to define, describe, and analyze the set of comparing dimensions, viable and valid technical as well as economic concerns, and efficiency/scalability orders. The following aspects (listed without any order and non complete) need to be addressed (besides other ones to be identified during the thesis).

• Engineering and system requirements: measurements, accounting, and charging of overlay networks, systems, and applicatons.
• Roles: provider, user (customer).
• Approaches (highly related): Overlay networks, application layer routing, multicast, peer-to-peer systems.
• Architecture: Protocols, applications, systems, end-systems.
• Implementation: Modules (within end-/intermediate system), protocols (between systems).
• Mechanisms: Traffic management (technical and economic), traffic shaping, charging, accounting, pricing and the like.
• Characteristics: incentive-compatible, efficient, scalable, viable (technical and economic), multi-domain, decentalized, self-organized, personalized.

Furthermore, the thesis will visualize (graphically) and describe all statements, scenarios, systems, and proposals.