Strategic Network Formation through Peering and Service Agreements

We introduce a game theoretic model of network formation in an effort to understand the complex system of business relationships between various Internet entities (e.g., Autonomous Systems, enterprise networks, residential customers). This system is at the heart of Internet connectivity. In our model we are given a network topology of nodes and links where the nodes (modeling the various Internet entities) act as the players of the game, and links represent potential contracts. Nodes wish to satisfy their demands, which earn potential revenues, but nodes may have to pay (or be paid by) their neighbors for links incident to them. By incorporating some of the qualities of Internet business relationships, we hope that our model will have predictive value. Specifically, we assume that contracts are either customer-provider or peering contracts. As often occurs in practice, we also include a mechanism that penalizes nodes if they drop traffic emanating from one of their customers. For a ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: FOCS
• Authors: Elliot Anshelevich, F. Bruce Shepherd, Gordon T. Wilfong
• Keywords: Business Relationships, FOCS 2006, Nash Equilibria, Theoretical Computer Science, Various Internet Entities