[pt] O desenvolvimento de arquiteturas de Qualidade de Serviço (QoS) para a Internet é um problema que tem recebido bastante atenção ultimamente. Diversos motivos têm impedido a implementação destas arquiteturas em larga escala como, por exemplo, a dificuldade de estabelecimento de contratos e políticas de QoS entre usuários, provedores e operadoras e a ausência de mecanismos na rede para solicitar serviços com garantia de qualidade. Apesar de não terem acesso a um serviço que garanta certos níveis de desempenho para cada tipo de aplicação, os usuários de Internet têm se mostrado cada vez mais exigentes na qualidade do acesso à rede. Isto se confirma com a migração crescente de muitos destes usuários para o acesso à Internet em banda larga. Os provedores de acesso à Internet, principalmente os de banda larga, devem adotar políticas de gerenciamento de seus recursos para atender às expectativas de qualidade dos usuários e se manter competitivos no mercado. Neste trabalho, foram identificados problemas nos processos adotados em um provedor de acesso em banda larga sem fio, a MLS Wireless. No sistema antigo, ocorriam situações que causavam a indisponibilidade de serviços por causa da limitação de conexões simultâneas na rede ou ainda uma degradação na banda e aumento na latência do acesso devido a falta de justiça no compartilhamento de recursos. O trabalho sugere soluções para as deficiências encontradas, implementando-as e analisando a eficácia das mesmas. Para resolver o problema de indisponibilidade, sugere-se o estabelecimento de limites por usuário, para que a capacidade total do sistema não seja esgotada. Para resolver o problema de injustiça e dar maior eqüidade na distribuição de recursos entre os usuários, é implementado um novo mecanismo de compartilhamento baseado em uma disciplina de fila SFQ (Stochastic Fairness Queueing). Os resultados mostraram que as modificações propostas foram efetivas. O tempo de acesso à serviços de WWW e e-mail durante períodos de congestionamento foi drasticamente reduzido, em alguns casos, de cerca de 1 minuto para menos de 10 segundos. / [en] The development of Quality of Service (QoS) architectures for the Internet is a problem that has received significative attention recently. The large scale deployment of such architectures has being blocked by several reasons, such as, the dificulty in establishing Service Level Agreements (SLA) of QoS policies between users, Internet Service Providers (ISP) and operators, and the lack of mechanisms on the network to request services with quality guarantees. Despite of not having access to a service that can guarantee certain levels of performance per aplication, the Internet users are getting more and more concerned about the network quality. That can be confirmed by the number of users that are migrating to the broadband Internet access. The ISP´s, specially the broadband ones, must take measurements to manage their resources to satisfy the users´ expectations of quality and stay competitive on the market. In this work, problems have being identified at the processes used by a broadband ISP, the MLS Wireless. With the old system, certain situations could cause the denial of service due the number of simultaneos connections or degradation and increased latency due the lack of fairness to share the network resources. This work suggests some solutions for these deficiencies, implementing and analyzing their effectiveness. To fix the denial of service, we suggest the limitation of resources per user, so that the total capacity won´t be depleted. To have the resources more fairly distributed among the users, a new mechanism of sharing is implemented, based on a discipline named SFQ (Stochastic Fairness Queueing). The results show that those modifications have being effective. The time to access services like WWW and e-mail during congestion periods was drasticaly reduced, in some cases, from about 1 minute to less than 10 seconds.

The Internet does not currently provide end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees across multiple network providers. We demonstrate that networks. by using dynamic pricing, can provide end-to-end QoS guarantees for those applications that need it. We propose the concept of QoS-Transit Services: a set of primitive services offered by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in order to deliver packets with statistical performance guarantees within its network, using dynamic pricing. ISPs can choose their own pricing schemes, as long as QoS is guaranteed. Through simulation, we demonstrate that even simple pricing mechanisms can guarantee the advertised performance of a QoS-Transit Service. End-to-end QoS across multiple networks is achieved by using multiple QoS¬Transit Services, from different ISPs, in sequence. Since QoS-Transit Services are offered by ISPs to generate revenues. we determine how to allocate bandwidth among the services in order to maximize revenue. assuming that demand functions can be estimated. We propose the IterLP and IterGreedy heuristics to determine the optimal allocation of bandwidth on predefined paths. IterLP achieves revenue close to 99% of the optimal solution. achieving this result quickly. IterGreedy achieves 90-95% optimality, but executes faster than IterLP. Additionally, to determine the paths on which to route the QoS-Transit Services so as to maximize the ISP's revenue, we propose three heuristics with different specific advantages: Service Grouping. Iterative Bottleneck Avoidance, and Iterative Bottleneck Avoidance with Tabu. We demonstrate that Iterative Bottleneck Avoidance with Tabu achieves approximately 98% of an optimal solution. Route selection is also shown to be more important when fewer QoS-Transit Services are offered. When demand functions cannot be adequately estimated. an ISP can use our Iterative Allocation Adjustment heuristic to find the optimal allocation of bandwidth for a set QoS-Transit Services. The heuristic achieves over 95% of the optimal revenue for an ISP. We then examine how better routes can be identified by valuing the links in the network to identify rerouting possibilities, or to identify paths for new QoS-Transit Services. To receive a specified end-to-end QoS, customers may use concatenated QoS-Transit Services. We propose the Hub Charging Model to provide scalable charging, using Brokers as middle-men. Additionally, we propose the concept of Overlay ISPs: ISPs that provide QoS-Transit Services by controlling an overlay network. An Overlay ISP, a type of virtual network operator, can offer QoS over a large geographic area without universal ISP support for QoS-Transit Services. Finally, we detail an architecture for offering QoS-Transit Services using existing protocol standards. By using a Broker-ISP as an intermediary between customers and the 1SPs offering QoS-Transit Services, routing and charging complexities can be hidden from the customers. Additionally we describe how security, billing, metering. and policing can be achieved. The competitive environment assumed within this dissertation is now emerging, with ISPs charging content providers in order to deliver content at a superior quality level to the ISP's customers. The time is therefore ripe for dynamic pricing to be deployed.

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Info.Tech.-Res.)--University of Wollongong, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 234-245.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 149-150).

[pt] O mercado brasileiro de provedores de acesso à internet tem apresentado um crescimento vertiginoso desde 1998 e está vivenciando um período de crescente concentração. Num momento em que a disputa pelos consumidores está cada vez mais acirrada, os esforços para a manutenção da base de clientes se tornam tão importantes quanto aqueles destinados à conquista de novos consumidores. Nesse contexto, a preocupação com a fidelidade dos usuários de provedores de acesso à internet adquire especial relevância. O presente estudo se propõe a investigar as dificuldades encontradas na fidelização dos clientes de provedores de acesso e analisar o tipo de fidelidade exibida por esses, valendo-se do framework proposto por Richard Oliver (1999) como principal referência para a classificação da fidelidade. / [en] The Brazilian market of access suppliers the InterNet has presented a vertiginous growth since 1998 and this having lived deeply one periodo of increasing concentracao. At a moment where the dispute for the consumers this each incited time more, the esforcos for manutencao of the base of important customers if becomes tao how much those destined the conquest of new consumers. In this context, preocupacao with the allegiance of the usuarios of access suppliers the InterNet acquires special relevancia. The present study if propoe to investigate the difficulties found in fidelizacao of the customers of access suppliers and to analyze the type of allegiance shown for these, using itself framework considered by Richard Oliver (1999) as main referencia for classificacao of the allegiance. / [es] EL mercado brasilero de proveedores de acceso a la internet ha presentado un crescimiento vertiginoso desde 1998 y está vive ahora un período de cresciente concentración. En un momento en que la disputa por los consumidores está cada vez más fuerte, los esfuerzos para mantener la base de clientes resultan tan importantes cuanto los destinados a la conquista de nuevos consumidores. En ese contexto, la preocupación con la fidelidad de los usuarios de proveedores de acceso a la internet adquire uma especial relevancia. EL presente estudio se propone investigar las dificuldades encontradas en la fidelización de los clientes de proveedores de acceso y analizar el tipo de fidelidad que ellos exhiben, utilizando el framework propuesto por Richard Oliver (1999) como principal referencia para la clasificación de la fidelidad.

Doctor Legum - LLD / Along with its inumerable wonders, the advent of the internet has brought with it very bad vices. The notion of convenience, which comes with the use of the internet, can be attributed to criminals who wish to disguise the proceeds of their ill-derived funds, or what is better known as cyberlaundering. Cyberlaundering is a phenomenon that seems negligible on face value, but, to the contrary, has very dire effects, especially on national economies, which are in no way trifling.This study describes the problem of cyberlaundering, pointing out the various legal issues pertaining to it. Given that cyberlaundering is a comparatively new crime, which is not yet conceptualized legally, criminal justice authorities find it hard to detect, investigate and prosecute cyberlaundering. An adequate legal regime against cyberlaundering is currently non-existent, as there is presently no concise international or national legal framework in place to contain the problem. Whilst the chief focus of the thesis is to devise a legal framework to combat cyberlaundering, considerable attention is also devoted to the tension that arises between public and private interests, amongst several other legal issues that come to play along the way. This is a debate that necessarily arises when legislatures resort to more radical anti-cyberlaundering laws. The study advocates a middle ground, which leads to the desired end of curbing the exponential growth of cyberlaundering, at the very least.

M.Ing. / The development of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies offers a novel platform for IP-based service resale via Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) that provide high network coverage and lower infrastructure cost. In this IP-based service resale business, the Access Point (AP) providers sets their pricing policies as IP-based service resellers to maximize their profits, while the resale-users (end users of the WMNs) who are price- and quality-of-service (QoS)- sensitive, respond to AP providers’ pricing policies by controlling their usage. This research exploits the efficiency of dynamic pricing by integrating pricing into best effort based WMNs as an economic control tool to optimize the profit of the AP providers and improve the utilization of their limited uplink bandwidth by taking into consideration the resale-users’ price- and QoS- sensitivity. Two cases are presented in this thesis: a monopoly, where a single AP provider aims to maximize its profit while guaranteeing its resale-users with a minimum allocated bandwidth; and a duopoly, where two AP providers compete to maximize their individual profits based on the resale-users’ price- and delay- sensitivity. For both cases, the limited uplink bandwidth of the AP providers is considered as a bottleneck of the WMN. We propose two dynamic pricing models for these two cases respectively and investigate how pricing depends on the assumptions that we make about the market. Indeed, the pricing model proposed for the monopoly is a preliminary study for the duopoly pricing model. In formulating and analyzing these two pricing models, we see how prices are driven by the profit-maximizing aim of one AP provider and the competition between two AP providers.

The thesis addresses the research question: How to describe, understand, and explain IT service delivery? Based on the research question, the following research questions were derived:  How to analyse IT service delivery based on ITIL in order to determine its current situation? How to formalize elements of IT service delivery in maturity level that can be used to assess its current status? These research questions are answered by two IT artefacts: an analysis method and a maturity model for IT service delivery. Both of them are constructed by design-science research guidelines. The analysis method is focused on understanding the IT service delivery in organizations; it is founded on the IT service delivery processes of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) version 2. The method proposed has been applied through three case studies of Nicaraguan Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The maturity model is oriented to formalize and assess the maturity level of IT service delivery; it is supported by IT service delivery elements that are considered significant for managing IT service delivery by the Nicaraguan ISP sector, by IT service concepts, and by maturity model properties, and complemented by the IT Service Capability Maturity Model. The maturity model provides a mechanism for evaluating the maturity level of IT service delivery through a set of maturity statements and includes a graphical representation; it is also applied to the traceable information of the current status of IT service delivery of one of the Nicaraguan ISPs. / QC 20110209

The Liability of the Information Society Service Provider for the Infringement of Copyright Abstract This diploma thesis deals with conditions of emergence and exclusion of liability of internet society service providers (ISP) with a focus on copyright. The thesis first defines the terms, which are essential for understanding of the topic. Then, in second chapter, it delas with copyright on the internet, specifically with the author's right to communicate work to the public, which can be violated in large extent by the internet users or ISPs themselves. In this regard, the thesis focuses on the case law interpretation of the concept of the right to communicate works to the public and conditions under which the ISP themselves may be found to be communicating works to the public without authorization. In third chapter, the thesis the work examines the relevant provisions of the E-Commerce Directive, which outlines the scope of the liability of ISPs providing hosting services. The thesis analyses the conditions of the safe harbour, i.e. the conditions that must be met by these providers in order not to incur liability for content which is stored by the users of their services. The recent CJEU is examined in this regard. In addition, the thesis analyses the prohibition of the general monitoring obligation,...