A Hierarchical Game with Strategy Evolution for Mobile Sponsored Content and Service Markets

In sponsored content and service markets, the content and service providers are able to subsidize their target mobile users through directly paying the mobile network operator, to lower the price of the data/service access charged by the network operator to the mobile users. The sponsoring mechanism leads to a surge in mobile data and service demand, which in return compensates for the sponsoring cost and benefits the content/service providers. In this paper, we study the interactions among the three parties in the market, namely, the mobile users, the content/service providers and the network operator, as a two-level game with multiple Stackelberg (i.e., leader) players. Our study is featured by the consideration of global network effects owning to consumers' grouping. Since the mobile users may have bounded rationality, we model the service-selection process among them as an evolutionary-population follower sub-game. Meanwhile, we model the pricing-then-sponsoring process between the content/service providers and the network operator as a non-cooperative equilibrium searching problem. By investigating the structure of the proposed game, we reveal a few important properties regarding the equilibrium existence, and propose a distributed, projection-based algorithm for iterative equilibrium searching. Simulation results validate the convergence of the proposed algorithm, and demonstrate how sponsoring helps improve both the providers' profits and the users' experience

A Stock Options Metaphor for Content Delivery Networks

The concept of Stock Options is used to address the scarcity of resources, not adequately addressed by the previous tools of our Prediction Mechanism. Using a Predictive Reservation Scheme, network and disk resources are being monitored through well-established techniques (Kernel Regression Estimators) in a given time frame. Next, an Secondary Market mechanism significantly improves the efficiency and robustness of our Predictive Reservation Scheme by allowing the fast exchange of unused (remaining) resources between the Origin Servers (CDN Clients). This exchange can happen, either by implementing socially optimal practices or by allowing automatic electronic auctions at the end of the day or at shorter time intervals. Finally, we further enhance our Prediction Mechanism; Stock Options are obtained and exercised, depending on the lack of resources at the end of day. As a result, Origin Servers may acquire resources (if required) at a normal price. The effectiveness of our mechanism further improves.Comment: 35 pages, 13 figure

An Economic and Operational Analysis of the Market for Content Distribution Services

We develop an economic and operational model to examine the conditions for the viable provision of content distribution services by a monopolistic firm. Each user firm (the content provider or CP) has the option of buying content distribution services from the content distribution service provider (CDP) or going on its own to arrange for its content to be distributed at a set of chosen sites operated by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The CDP enjoys operational benefits in terms of both the fixed and variable cost of replicating content. However, we find that for certain market situations (concentrated CP and ISP demand), not all CPs will find it attractive to buy services from the CDP. The best case for the CDP is when the various content providers have similar demand that is uniformly distributed across ISP sites

QUALITY OF SERVICE DELIVERY: ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF MULTI-HOMING AND CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORKS

The structure of the Internet serves as a big commoditizer of all traffic. Therefore all data, be it time critical or not is transported at the same speed. However, recent trends in the internet are changing this structure. The practices of multi-homing and using content delivery networks reduce the commodity nature of data being transported and put terminating Internet service providers in a position to price discriminate against specific providers or types of traffic. We firstly formalize multi-homing and content delivery networks, we then derive end user prices for paid content and lastly show consequences of the modeled situation. We thus show how the two technologies to bypass crowded peerings change the Internet business model. Traffic which is sensitive to transport quality, such as business critical or delay sensitive traffic, will be paying higher fees to terminating ISPs

Re-designing Dynamic Content Delivery in the Light of a Virtualized Infrastructure

We explore the opportunities and design options enabled by novel SDN and NFV technologies, by re-designing a dynamic Content Delivery Network (CDN) service. Our system, named MOSTO, provides performance levels comparable to that of a regular CDN, but does not require the deployment of a large distributed infrastructure. In the process of designing the system, we identify relevant functions that could be integrated in the future Internet infrastructure. Such functions greatly simplify the design and effectiveness of services such as MOSTO. We demonstrate our system using a mixture of simulation, emulation, testbed experiments and by realizing a proof-of-concept deployment in a planet-wide commercial cloud system.Comment: Extended version of the paper accepted for publication in JSAC special issue on Emerging Technologies in Software-Driven Communication - November 201