Network Non-neutrality Debate: An Economic Analysis

This paper studies the economic utilities and the quality of service (QoS) in a two-sided non-neutral market where Internet service providers (ISPs) charge content providers (CPs) for the content delivery. We propose new models on a two-sided market which involves a CP, an ISP, end users and advertisers. The CP may have either the subscription revenue model (charging end users) or the advertisement revenue model (charging advertisers). We formulate the interactions between the ISP and the CP as a noncooperative game problem for the former and an optimization problem for the latter. Our analysis shows that the revenue model of the CP plays a significant role in a non-neutral Internet. With the subscription model, both the ISP and the CP receive better (or worse) utilities as well as QoS in the presence of side payment at the same time. However, with the advertisement model, the side payment impedes the CP from investing on its contents.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figure

Predicting the Impact of Measures Against P2P Networks on the Transient Behaviors

The paper has two objectives. The first is to study rigorously the transient behavior of some P2P networks whenever information is replicated and disseminated according to epidemic-like dynamics. The second is to use the insight gained from the previous analysis in order to predict how efficient are measures taken against peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. We first introduce a stochastic model which extends a classical epidemic model and characterize the P2P swarm behavior in presence of free riding peers. We then study a second model in which a peer initiates a contact with another peer chosen randomly. In both cases the network is shown to exhibit a phase transition: a small change in the parameters causes a large change in the behavior of the network. We show, in particular, how the phase transition affects measures that content provider networks may take against P2P networks that distribute non-authorized music or books, and what is the efficiency of counter-measures.Comment: IEEE Infocom (2011

Forever Young: Aging Control For Smartphones In Hybrid Networks

The demand for Internet services that require frequent updates through small messages, such as microblogging, has tremendously grown in the past few years. Although the use of such applications by domestic users is usually free, their access from mobile devices is subject to fees and consumes energy from limited batteries. If a user activates his mobile device and is in range of a service provider, a content update is received at the expense of monetary and energy costs. Thus, users face a tradeoff between such costs and their messages aging. The goal of this paper is to show how to cope with such a tradeoff, by devising \emph{aging control policies}. An aging control policy consists of deciding, based on the current utility of the last message received, whether to activate the mobile device, and if so, which technology to use (WiFi or 3G). We present a model that yields the optimal aging control policy. Our model is based on a Markov Decision Process in which states correspond to message ages. Using our model, we show the existence of an optimal strategy in the class of threshold strategies, wherein users activate their mobile devices if the age of their messages surpasses a given threshold and remain inactive otherwise. We then consider strategic content providers (publishers) that offer \emph{bonus packages} to users, so as to incent them to download updates of advertisement campaigns. We provide simple algorithms for publishers to determine optimal bonus levels, leveraging the fact that users adopt their optimal aging control strategies. The accuracy of our model is validated against traces from the UMass DieselNet bus network.Comment: See also http://www-net.cs.umass.edu/~sadoc/agecontrol