1,121 research outputs found
Transforming Energy Networks via Peer to Peer Energy Trading: Potential of Game Theoretic Approaches
Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading has emerged as a next-generation energy
management mechanism for the smart grid that enables each prosumer of the
network to participate in energy trading with one another and the grid. This
poses a significant challenge in terms of modeling the decision-making process
of each participant with conflicting interest and motivating prosumers to
participate in energy trading and to cooperate, if necessary, for achieving
different energy management goals. Therefore, such decision-making process
needs to be built on solid mathematical and signal processing tools that can
ensure an efficient operation of the smart grid. This paper provides an
overview of the use of game theoretic approaches for P2P energy trading as a
feasible and effective means of energy management. As such, we discuss various
games and auction theoretic approaches by following a systematic classification
to provide information on the importance of game theory for smart energy
research. Then, the paper focuses on the P2P energy trading describing its key
features and giving an introduction to an existing P2P testbed. Further, the
paper zooms into the detail of some specific game and auction theoretic models
that have recently been used in P2P energy trading and discusses some important
finding of these schemes.Comment: 38 pages, single column, double spac
A Game Theoretic Analysis of Incentives in Content Production and Sharing over Peer-to-Peer Networks
User-generated content can be distributed at a low cost using peer-to-peer
(P2P) networks, but the free-rider problem hinders the utilization of P2P
networks. In order to achieve an efficient use of P2P networks, we investigate
fundamental issues on incentives in content production and sharing using game
theory. We build a basic model to analyze non-cooperative outcomes without an
incentive scheme and then use different game formulations derived from the
basic model to examine five incentive schemes: cooperative, payment, repeated
interaction, intervention, and enforced full sharing. The results of this paper
show that 1) cooperative peers share all produced content while non-cooperative
peers do not share at all without an incentive scheme; 2) a cooperative scheme
allows peers to consume more content than non-cooperative outcomes do; 3) a
cooperative outcome can be achieved among non-cooperative peers by introducing
an incentive scheme based on payment, repeated interaction, or intervention;
and 4) enforced full sharing has ambiguous welfare effects on peers. In
addition to describing the solutions of different formulations, we discuss
enforcement and informational requirements to implement each solution, aiming
to offer a guideline for protocol designers when designing incentive schemes
for P2P networks.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
On the Shapley-like Payoff Mechanisms in Peer-Assisted Services with Multiple Content Providers
This paper studies an incentive structure for cooperation and its stability
in peer-assisted services when there exist multiple content providers, using a
coalition game theoretic approach. We first consider a generalized coalition
structure consisting of multiple providers with many assisting peers, where
peers assist providers to reduce the operational cost in content distribution.
To distribute the profit from cost reduction to players (i.e., providers and
peers), we then establish a generalized formula for individual payoffs when a
"Shapley-like" payoff mechanism is adopted. We show that the grand coalition is
unstable, even when the operational cost functions are concave, which is in
sharp contrast to the recently studied case of a single provider where the
grand coalition is stable. We also show that irrespective of stability of the
grand coalition, there always exist coalition structures which are not
convergent to the grand coalition. Our results give us an important insight
that a provider does not tend to cooperate with other providers in
peer-assisted services, and be separated from them. To further study the case
of the separated providers, three examples are presented; (i) underpaid peers,
(ii) service monopoly, and (iii) oscillatory coalition structure. Our study
opens many new questions such as realistic and efficient incentive structures
and the tradeoffs between fairness and individual providers' competition in
peer-assisted services.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, an extended version of the paper to be presented
in ICST GameNets 2011, Shanghai, China, April 201
Collusion in Peer-to-Peer Systems
Peer-to-peer systems have reached a widespread use, ranging from academic and industrial applications to home entertainment. The key advantage of this paradigm lies in its scalability and flexibility, consequences of the participants sharing their resources for the common welfare. Security in such systems is a desirable goal. For example, when mission-critical operations or bank transactions are involved, their effectiveness strongly depends on the perception that users have about the system dependability and trustworthiness. A major threat to the security of these systems is the phenomenon of collusion. Peers can be selfish colluders, when they try to fool the system to gain unfair advantages over other peers, or malicious, when their purpose is to subvert the system or disturb other users. The problem, however, has received so far only a marginal attention by the research community. While several solutions exist to counter attacks in peer-to-peer systems, very few of them are meant to directly counter colluders and their attacks. Reputation, micro-payments, and concepts of game theory are currently used as the main means to obtain fairness in the usage of the resources. Our goal is to provide an overview of the topic by examining the key issues involved. We measure the relevance of the problem in the current literature and the effectiveness of existing philosophies against it, to suggest fruitful directions in the further development of the field
Using Tuangou to reduce IP transit costs
A majority of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) support connectivity to the entire Internet by transiting their traffic via other providers. Although the transit prices per Mbps decline steadily, the overall transit costs of these ISPs remain high or even increase, due to the traffic growth. The discontent of the ISPs with the high transit costs has yielded notable innovations such as peering, content distribution networks, multicast, and peer-to-peer localization. While the above solutions tackle the problem by reducing the transit traffic, this paper explores a novel approach that reduces the transit costs without altering the traffic. In the proposed CIPT (Cooperative IP Transit), multiple ISPs cooperate to jointly purchase IP (Internet Protocol) transit in bulk. The aggregate transit costs decrease due to the economies-of-scale effect of typical subadditive pricing as well as burstable billing: not all ISPs transit their peak traffic during the same period. To distribute the aggregate savings among the CIPT partners, we propose Shapley-value sharing of the CIPT transit costs. Using public data about IP traffic of 264 ISPs and transit prices, we quantitatively evaluate CIPT and show that significant savings can be achieved, both in relative and absolute terms. We also discuss the organizational embodiment, relationship with transit providers, traffic confidentiality, and other aspects of CIPT
Cloud assisted P2P media streaming for bandwidth constrained mobile subscribers
Multimedia streaming applications have disruptively occupied bandwidth in wire line Internet, yet today's fledging mobile media streaming still poses many challenges in efficient content distribution due to the form of mobile devices. At the same time, cloud computing is gaining power as a promising technology to transform IT industry and many eminent enterprises are developing their own cloud infrastructures. However, the lack of applications hinders clouds' large-scale implementation. In this paper, we envision a cloud-assisted power-efficient mobile P2P media streaming architecture that addresses the weakness of today's wireless access technologies. Clouds are responsible for storage and computing demanding tasks, and mobile devices colocating with each other share bandwidth and cooperatively stream media content to distribute the load. We first model interactions among mobile devices as a coalition game, and then discuss the optimal chunk retrieval scheduling. Finally, we draw on realistic mobile phone data and utilize an ARIMA model for colocation duration prediction among mobile devices. © 2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versio
On the Formation of Peer-to-Peer Networks: Self-Organized Sharing and Groups
In this paper, we investigate the formation of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks with rational participating agents (active peers). In the absence of a central planner, peers choose their own utility-maximizing strategies for coalition and peer formation. P2P networks evolve dynamically through the activities of interactions among individual nodes and group units. We propose a framework for multilevel formation dynamics, including an individual level (content sharing decision and group selection) and a group level (membership admission). The respective utilities of the individual node and the collective player are formulated as functions of operational performance metrics such as expected content availability, search delay, transmission delay, and download delay. We study the impacts of various system parameters on the emergence of self-organized P2P network configuration features such as free-riding level and group size. Furthermore, we investigate the stability and efficiency of P2P networks and propose internal transfer mechanisms that force stable networks to become efficient
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