This paper studies a resource allocation problem introduced by Koutsoupias
and Papadimitriou. The scenario is modelled as a multiple-player game in which
each player selects one of a finite number of known resources. The cost to the
player is the total weight of all players who choose that resource, multiplied
by the ``delay'' of that resource. Recent papers have studied the Nash
equilibria and social optima of this game in terms of the L∞ cost
metric, in which the social cost is taken to be the maximum cost to any player.
We study the L1 variant of this game, in which the social cost is taken to
be the sum of the costs to the individual players, rather than the maximum of
these costs. We give bounds on the size of the coordination ratio, which is the
ratio between the social cost incurred by selfish behavior and the optimal
social cost; we also study the algorithmic problem of finding optimal
(lowest-cost) assignments and Nash Equilibria. Additionally, we obtain bounds
on the ratio between alternative Nash equilibria for some special cases of the
problem.Comment: 19 page