Market-skilled agents for automating the bandwidth commerce

Abstract

In the current deregulated Telecom scenario the number of network operators and service providers is rapidly increasing. The resulting competition generates the need for a flexible resource management. In parallel, the fast growth of electronic commerce opens a new market where operators can offer network bandwidth commodities. In this dynamic context, the traditional architecture of Telecom networks needs to be evolved. The integration of economic principles with software technology is a strategic contribution to this evolution. In particular, market-skilled software agents seem to be one of the most promising paradigms. In this paper we describe an agent-based system for the e-commerce of “IP bandwidth", and we discuss how the integration of this system within a network management platform would automate the advertisement of Telecom goods, the monitoring of market trends, the pricing and the configuration of network resources.