Game Theoretic Analysis of Network Dimensioning Strategies in Differentiated Services Networks

Abstract—In the future Internet, introducing service differentiation the quality guarantees seem to have more importance. Beyond the basic performance parameters such as loss probability, delay, jitter, etc., the QoS network dimensioning problem requires the knowledge of the total utility experienced by the users. Considering the users as players competing for the network resources, the Game Theory seems to be a useful tool for describing the behavior of the system. Applying the rules of the noncooperative games where the players are selfish and act individually, Nash equilibria can be used to determine the “rest points ” of the system. Analyzing these points by calculating the overall utility gained by the users and the overall income of the network operator, different network dimensioning strategies can be evaluated. This paper introduces evaluation of typical dimensioning strategies in different domain control setups with diverse user expectations in terms of QoS and price