[alto] Introducing costs for wireless networks

["Randriamasy, Sabine (Nokia - FR)" <[e-mail]>]

Hi all,

Any thoughts in the WG on the following?
Thanks,
Sabine

Pursuant to previous ALTO work on wireless networks and relating to the WG item on ALTO metrics, there are a number of abstracted metrics reporting on cellular and wireless networks worth considering. For instance, applications on UEs may like to know about the connection costs associated to the cells it is likely to connect to. These costs may for instance be impacted by the cell load, see section 2.1 of [draft-randriamasy-alto-cost-context].

Using cellular costs requires introducing a new address type and a new identifier namespace for cells. Based on 3GPP standards, we may opt for the name space "ECGI" and the related address format as suggested in section 4 of [draft-rauschenbach-alto-wireless-access] that also proposes that to map cells to PIDs covering cell IDs.

Cellular connection costs (CCC for short) can be conveyed by for instance the (Filtered) Cost Map (FCM) service or an extension of the Endpoint Property (EPS) that could be added to [draft-roome-alto-unified-props].

A PID in a Network Map can cover a cell with an address from the address space "ECGI". A PID thus hides the underlying technical aspects. The CCC in a F/CM between a UE and a cell/PID can be encoded in the bi-directional, uplink and downlink directions, within or across PIDs.  A UE can retrieve its "serving PID" via the Endpoint Property "PID" applied to its service cell ID.