Modern broadband networking issues, quality-of-service, resource allocation, and service disciplines

This thesis focuses on the analysis, performance evaluation, and design of several aspects of the global-data network beyond year 2000. The main issue in this study is the provisioning of Quality-of-Service (QoS) in an efficient way. The efficiency of some already-developed or proposed broadband networking techniques are investigated in terms of their ability and reliability in delivering QoS guaranteed services. Mainly, Multi-Protocol Over ATM (MPOA), Differentiated Services, and Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technologies are frequently discussed in this thesis.; Toward these objectives, the thesis starts with analyzing the performance of MPOA. The difference in the efficiency of this technique when implemented in Local Area Networks or Wide Area Networks is investigated. Also, a new cache table management system, which operates in a Multi-Protocol Client, based on a neural network technique is proposed and evaluated.; The thesis continues by investigating the usefulness of a Multi-Class Internet, specifically a bandwidth segregation approach is considered and analyzed. A new technique for emulating connection-oriented services over IP layer is proposed and compared to the existing technique in an MPLS architecture.; Resource allocation may be considered as the most fundamental operation for the success of any multi-class network. Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) operations are analyzed at the-call level, controlling the call blocking rate at different connection-oriented Classes-of-Service is considered as the objective. A novel DBA algorithm called Virtual Demand Distribution (VDD) is proposed and evaluated under a non-stationary environment.; An attempt is made to extend the multi-class concept to mobile wireless networks. Preliminary ideas are proposed to design fading-aware time division multiple access multi-class mobile wireless local area networks. However, a description of a Two-Class Packet Reservation Multiple Access. (TCPRMA), protocol is presented. To evaluate the performance of TCPRMA, a revenue comparison framework is developed. This framework clarifies the meaning and interaction between the concepts of QoS metric, QoS score, service disciplines, willingness-to-pay, and revenue.; The thesis ends by a brief study of a very practical form of dynamic pricing, namely; the call-setup dynamic pricing. The problem is modeled as a discounted Markov decision process and ϵ-optimal policies are found for several scenarios.