End-to-end QoS negotiation in network federations

1 The Future Internet will see the emergence of value-added applications (e.g. Cloud Computing, telepresence, etc.) requiring Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees across multiple managed networks. Deploying mechanisms to solve technical questions entails a minimal cooperation between network operators (aka. carriers). But, this cooperation is subject to economic constraints (e.g. confidentiality on resources, pricing, risk avoidance, etc.). To overcome these constraints, an interesting direction lies in the creation of operator federations, aka. alliances, that would ensure a technical convergence. In this paper, we detail the work in progress on a scenario of intercarrier service negotiation taking place within such an alliance. The service is negotiated between a third party responsible for the alliance and customers. We describe the associated game and analyze equilibrium conditions in it.