Smoothing Out Focused Demand for Network Resources

ABSTRACT
We explore the problem of sharing network resources when agents’
preferences lead to temporally concentrated, inefficient use of the
network. In such cases, external incentives must be supplied to
smooth out demand. Taking a game-theoretic approach, we con-
sider a setting in which bandwidth is available during several
time slots at a fixed cost, but all agents have a natural preference
for choosing the same slot. We present four mechanisms that
motivate agents to distribute load optimally by probabilistically
waiving the cost for each time slot, and analyze equilibria.
1. INTRODUCTION
It is common for networks to experience frequent conges-
tion even when average demand for the network is much
less than the network’s capacity. In some networks, times
of peak demand are regular and predictable. Such focused
loading can occur because many agents’ utility functions
are maximized by using the network at some focal time.
For example, studies of long-distance telephone networks
show a spike in usage when rates drop in the evening [7, 1].
Predictably heavy loads also occur on web servers just be-
fore deadlines or just after new content or services are made
available. In this paper, we provide a game-theoretic analy-
sis of several solutions to the problem of focused loading.