Extended Service Level Management for the Provisioning of Streaming Internet Services

The global Internet is widely used to trade products, digital contents, and services. A new form of service over the Internet, also referred to as E-Commerce service, is the delivery of real-time multimedia streams on demand. The service of providing streamed information comprises the reliable transmission of single data packets from the E-Commerce Service Provider (ESP) to the end-customer via several intermediate Internet Service Providers (ISP). Reliable service delivery implies the transmission of data with specifications for the Quality of Service (QoS), hence called service provisioning. A big problem for service provisioning on today’s best effort Internet is the lack of traffic prioritization mechanisms to guarantee QoS and the fact that many ISPs are involved in the delivery process. There are approaches to enable QoS-based end-to-end communication on different levels. On the communication level, the problem is approached rather technically by implementing new Internet Protocol Architectures. Generic business models are developed on a business level, while Service Level Management (SLM) provides a framework on the contracting level to specify, negotiate, stipulate, and monitor quality and quantity of service levels between service provider and service customer. Since all of these approaches do not enable service provisioning of streaming Internet services independent from each other, we have designed and implemented a holistic approach that connects all three levels of abstraction. On the business level, we have developed an Integrated Business Model for streaming Internet services with a focus on charging and accounting for the data transport. Our Integrated Business Model includes a role model, a service model, and a business process model, which combines tasks and roles during different phases of the service delivery. On the contracting level, we have enhanced the concepts of the general SLM to form the Extended Service Level Management, which translates business needs on the business level into infrastructure requirements on the communication level. Our Extended Service Level Management is based on the specification and stipulation of Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Operational Level Agreements (OLA) among all the involved business entities, and it provides architectures for negotiating, trading, and monitoring these service contracts.