The Internet has experienced a tremendous success. Starting from an academic (and somewhat free) communication network, it has been expanded to commercial purposes and has led to congestion. The way customers are currently charged is based on a so-called flat-rate price: they pay a fixed subscription fee to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and have an unlimited access to the network. This simple and attractive method is nonetheless unfair since it does not discriminate users. Introducing new pricing schemes seems a valuable option for allowing congestion control and service differentiation among users or applications. While congestion hardly occur in the backbone network, we still have to investigate ways to control it in access networks, the so-called last mile problem, with a special emphasis on wireless. The challenge is therefore to design a pricing scheme representing a good trade-off between economic efficiency and engineering simplicity and that both users and providers would accept. During this talk, we will review few models for pricing bandwidth usage. We will also briefly present other contexts where pricing seems an appropriate way to incentivize users to participe by rewarding them in situations where each new user introduces an added-value to the network capability, such as for example in ad-hoc networks or peer-to-peer networks. A current research direction we will emphasize comes from the observation that there is not only a relation between customers and providers, but also a competition among providers and heterogeneous technologies, and this aspect needs to be integrated in the models and proposals. A typical example is the competition for access points at a WiFi hotspot, or the choice between different access media (WiFi, WiMax, UMTS, etc.). Similarly, pricing is also now a requirement among competitive providers themselves, which need to exchange traffic to ensure end-to-end delivery. Those points are still in their infancy and we will introduce the challenges and some proposals. This talk is at the heart of cross-disciplinary and novel aspects of networks and system management, on the economics of infrastructure management. It involves networking techniques, quantitative network modeling and model evaluation methods, economy themes, game theory, control theory and optimisation.

Simpleweb: Podcasts on network management

BoD 2010 keynote by Bruno Tuffin - Pricing in Telecommunication Networks: Some Issues and Models

The reach of technology today extends nearly everywhere, and more importantly, in this new age, beyond the data center. Not only do more and more people carry the internet in the palm of their hand, but virtually all elements of business processes, production, collaboration and physical infrastructure are becoming instrumented electronically, networked and accessible, enabling new and exciting solutions and services. This is the foundation of a smarter planet, creating new value for business, government and science. A very dynamic infrastructure is required to support this expansion of value, powered by advances in Service Management to provide improved agility in leveraging technology, with vastly reduced costs and greater automation and efficiency. Service Management provides the visibility, control, and automation of this dynamic infrastructure, and a vehicle to monetize management technology. I will discuss market forces, opportunity, technology directions, and research challenges.

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - keynote by Alan Ganek - Service Management powers a smarter planet

Opening of the IFIP/IEEE Integrated Management 2009 Symposium. Recorded at the 11th Integrated Management Symposium (IM 2009), which was held June 1-5, 2009 in Long Island, New York, USA at Hofstra University.

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - Opening

Closing of the IFIP/IEEE Integrated Management 2009 Symposium. Announcement of the Dan Stokesberry Award to Raouf Boutaba, Best Paper Award, Best Dissertation Award and travel grants. Announcement of NOMS 2010, Manweek 2009 and IM 2011.

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - Closing Plenary and Awards

The theme of IM 2009, "Making Management Scalable, Robust, Cost-effective and Revenue Generating", points to key issues of a technical and business nature that the field has been trying to address for many years, yet continues to struggle with. At the same time, this has not prevented dramatic progress in the technologies they manage. Networks continue to grow, communication services are getting ever more pervasive, and innovation in those services continues to grow. The question then arises, which impact does progress in management technology really have on the technology that it manages and its supporting businesses? Is the impact merely one of incremental improvements in economics, or is it more profound? If management was more scalable, robust, cost-effective, and revenue generating than it is, what would be the impact on the managed technologies and their adoption? Would we see even more rapid progress, would we see different and more powerful services than we do today, or would there be entirely new classes of applications that would suddenly become feasible? In other words, is management a bottleneck? On the other hand, is management in reality doing just fine and its challenges mostly imagined? In which areas does progress in management really matter, and why? Panelists: Alexander Clemm (panel moderator), John Strassner, Alan Ganek, Joseph L. Hellerstein, Larry Bernstein, George Pavlou

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - Distinguished Experts Panel (Part 1)

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - Distinguished Experts Panel (Part 2)

Software technology continues to emerge. Systems and network management developers have always been early technology adopters. What must you learn to be effective in 2015? This keynote identifies future technologies that will be the foundation for our systems and discusses their impact. Topics will include, but are not limited to, Communications, Componentry, Autonomics, Humanism and Architecture.

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - keynote by Larry Bernstein - The future belongs to nimble software developers

Fractionated space systems offer a radically new approach to designing, building, testing, launching, operating, maintaining, and evolving spacecraft. Fractionation is the process whereby a satellite is decomposed into a cluster of wirelessly networked smaller spacecraft. This cluster creates a "virtual satellite" that is fundamentally more flexible and robust than its monolithic counterpart. In 2007 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began a program known as System F6 that will attempt to design, build, and launch the very first fractionated space system. Dr. Owen Brown, creator of the concept, and the Program Manager of F6, will explain the technical challenges, approach, and the potential implications of F6 on future space architectures.

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - keynote by Owen Brown - Fractionated Space Systems: Networking in the Next Space Age

Over time the "Internet" has become the central element for integration of network functions and services. In a very profound sense the "Internet" has dramatically lowered the time and cost for creating new applications, new services, and new ways of social interaction. At the same time what we now call the "Internet" includes an enabling layer of computing, storage, communications, software, and special purpose devices. The "Internet" is increasingly the delivery mechanism for critical services. Some of these are related to: control systems for utilities and transportation; financial services; healthcare; safety; law enforcement; and emergency response. The consequence is that at least portions of the "Internet" must exhibit reliability, high availability, and scalability to serve large numbers of citizens. The talk will concentrate on the approaches and challenges of managing and operating hardened IP infrastructure suitable for critical services and will examine the requirements from illustrative application examples.

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - keynote by Adam Drobot - Managing IP Networks for Critical Functions

Cells use complex networks to handle metabolic, regulatory and signaling operations. Assuring robust operations of these networks is, literally, a matter of life and death. These networks, furthermore, must be able to adapt to significant changes in their operating environment; e.g., in the absence of glucose a bacteria may need to reconfigure its networks to process lactose. Cellular networks thus face similar challenges of managing failures and configuration changes as communication networks. Unlike communication networks, however, these operations management functions must be integrated into the networks design. This presentation will consider some of the architectural fundamentals of genomic networks from the perspective of integrated network management.

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - keynote by Yechiam Yemini - Can Genomic Networks Teach Integrated Management?

Large scale networks and service infrastructures present challenges that are at the forefront of systems research. This talk will give an overview of the problem domain, and the role that exploratory data mining plays in addressing these challenges. I will present work at AT&T Labs on a scalable data management infrastructure, data visualization tools, and advanced management applications.

IFIP/IEEE IM 2009 - keynote by Chuck Kalmanek - Exploratory Data Mining in Network and Service Management

Presentation of the following papers: 1) A Role-based Infrastructure for the Management of Dynamic Communities, by Alberto Schaeffer-Filho, Emil Lupu, Morris Sloman, Sye-Loong Keoh, Jorge Lobo, Seraphin Calo (U.K., U.S.A.) 2) PSH: A Private and Shared History-based Incentive Mechanism, by Thomas Bocek, Wang Kun, Fabio Victora Hecht, David Hausheer, Burkhard Stiller (Switzerland, China) 3) Cooperation under Scarcity: The Sharer's Dilemma, by Michael Rogers, Saleem Bhatti (U.K.)

IFIP/ACM AIMS 2008 - Session 2: Autonomy, Incentives and Trust (Chair: Burkhard Stiller)

Presentation of the following papers: 1) Entwined Influences of Users' Behaviour and QoS: A Multi-model Approach, by Julien Siebert, Vincent Chevrier, Laurent Ciarletta (France) 2) Business-driven Management of Policies in DiffServ Networks, by Antonio Astorga, Javier Rubio-Loyola (Spain) 3) Token-based Payment in Dynamic SAML-based Federations, by David J. Lutz, Burkhard Stiller (Germany, Switzerland)

IFIP/ACM AIMS 2008 - PhD Session 1

In this short tutorial we stress the importance of publishing your research results at the right venues. First we identify the workshops, conferences, magazines and journals in the area of network and systems management. We will discuss the quality of some of our conferences and journals, as perceived by experts in our field, as well as people outside our area. For this we present some acceptance rates, acceptance procedures, conference and journal rankings, as well as impact factors. Although some Ph.D. students may believe that a main goal is to publish as many papers as possible, this tutorial will stress that there are other important metrics, such as the number of citations, that are used to judge the quality of your research. We will discuss one metric that is currently popular, called the H-factor, and explain how to measure your own H-factor, using for example the Web of Science (instead of Google's scholar). The tutorial concludes with explaining the importance of publishing in journals indexed in Thomson's Science Citation Index (SCI), or alternatives like Scopus. It also explains CPP, JCS and FCS factors.

IFIP/ACM AIMS 2008 - Tutorial: Where to Publish - AIko Pras

In his keynote, Simon Leinen, who is working at the Swiss Education and Research Network (SWITCH), will talk about their particular (and sometimes peculiar) network engineering and management practices, including things that didn't work so well, and about management tools that they would find useful.

IFIP/ACM AIMS 2008 - Keynote (Part 1): Robust Network Operations: Adaptation and Control (Simon Leinen)

Podcasts on various network management related topics, including tutorials, recordings at conferences and standardization meetings.

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Simpleweb: Podcasts on network management

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