Basic network creation games

We study a natural network creation game, in which each node locally tries to minimize its local diameter or its local average distance to other nodes, by swapping one incident edge at a time. The central question is what structure the resulting equilibrium graphs have, in particular, how well they globally minimize diameter. For the average version, we prove an upper bound of 2O( √ lg n) , a lower bound of 3, a tight bound of exactly 2 for trees, and give evidence of a general polylogarithmic upper bound. For the diameter version, we prove a lower bound of Ω( √ n), and a tight upper bound of 3 for trees. All of our upper bounds apply equally well to previously extensively studied network creation games, both in terms of the diameter metric described above and the previously studied price of anarchy (which are related by constant factors). In surprising contrast, our model has no parameter α for the link creation cost, so our results automatically apply for all values of α wit...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: SPAA
• Authors: Noga Alon, Erik D. Demaine, MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi, Tom Leighton
• Keywords: Distributed And Parallel Computing, Lower Bound, Network Creation Games, SPAA 2010, Upper Bounds