Smoothing out focused demand for network resources

Kevin Leyton-Brown, Ryan Porter, Shobha Venkataraman, Balaji Prabhakar

Abstract: We explore the problem of sharing network resources when agents' preferences lead to temporally concentrated, inefficient use of the network. In such cases, external incentives must be supplied to smooth out demand. Taking a game-theoretic approach, we consider a setting in which bandwidth is available during several time slots at a fixed cost, but all agents have a natural preference for choosing the same slot. We present four mechanisms that motivate agents to distribute load optimally by probabilistically waiving the cost for each time slot, and analyze equilibria.