Towards Providing Low-Risk and Economically Feasible Network Data Transfer Services

In the first part of this paper we present the first steps towards providing low-risk and economically feasible network data transfer services. We introduce three types of data transfer services and present general guidelines and algorithms for managing service prices, risks and schedules. In the second part of the paper we solve two packet scheduling cost optimization problems and present efficient algorithms for identifying maximum weight (k-level-) caterpillar subtrees in tree networks.