NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Inter-provider Dynamics in Neutral and Non-neutral Networks

在过去五年里，涉及营利性互联网服务提供商和“内容”提供商的网络中立性辩论，以及与安全相关的问题，在西方媒体对互联网的报道以及北美和欧洲的政府监管听证会上占据了最重要的位置。两个主要问题涉及公平对待应用程序(应用程序中立)以及独立内容和服务提供商之间的附带支付。这笔赠款的四个研究重点是：开发有关各方的宏观经济和网络动态的公正、简明的模型；分析这些模型，目的是评估不同定价制度、提供商联盟和服务差异化战略的相对好处；获取当前的真实数据和实际经验教训，为这些模型提供参考；在一个初步的实例研究中，终端用户需求的被动模型被用来定义多个互联网服务提供商和多个内容提供商之间的博弈。用户可以参与两种类型的应用：一种是延迟敏感型，另一种是吞吐量敏感型。用户与特定供应商的参与度取决于供应商？S目前的价格，受制于客户惯性模型，当竞争对手？价格很接近。考虑了不同类型的提供者之间受管制的附带付款。在稳定的纳什均衡中，一个令人惊讶的发现是，接受一方付款的垄断提供商(比方说单一的互联网服务提供商)实际上比中立者的收入更少？没有附带付款的情况(附带付款会导致收款人提高最终用户价格，从而降低最终用户需求)。来自消耗最多带宽的应用程序类型的收入自然受到最大的影响。这项研究的主要智力价值在于，对于参与互联网经济的不同实体之间的宏观互动的跨学科因素，建立易于处理但现实的数学模型是一项挑战。在存在自然时变的系统参数的情况下，跟踪识别出的接近最优的策略。尽管模型可能很简单，但它经常产生出人意料的复杂行为(例如，具有不同稳定性质量的多个纳什均衡)。这项研究将通过研究派生结果对不同模型参数的敏感性，确定重要的现实世界数据和实践经验教训。这项研究的更广泛影响的一个方面与网络中立性辩论中涉及的巨大财务风险有关，因此这项研究甚至在短期内也有可能显著影响互联网运营和架构发展。行业推广是这项研究的重要组成部分，不仅是为了跟上当前的发展，也是为了获得第一手相关数据，希望这些数据能够传播给更广泛的研究界。这项研究更广泛影响的另一个方面是开发和传播适用于联网研究生课程的相关“经济学”教学模块，以及从计算机科学和电子与计算机工程专业中代表性不足的少数群体中招募和培训学生。

Over the past five years, the network neutrality debate involving for-profit ISPs and "content" providers, together with security-related issues, has figured most prominently in the Western media's coverage of the Internet and in government regulatory hearings in both North America and Europe. The two principal issues have to do with equitable treatment of applications (application neutrality) and side payments between independent content and service providers.The four research thrusts of this grant are: the development of unbiased, parsimonious models of macro-economic and networking dynamics of all parties involved; analyzing these models with an aim to assess the relative benefit of different pricing regimes, provider alliances, and service-differentiation strategies; acquiring current, real-world data and practical lessons-learned to inform these models; and focusing in particular on comparing neutral to non-neutral frameworks.In a preliminary example study, a passive model of end-user demand was used to define a game between multiple ISPs and multiple content providers. The users could engage in two types of applications: one delay sensitive, the other throughput sensitive. The fraction of users engaged with a particular provider depended on the provider?s current prices, subject to a customer inertia model when competitors? prices were close. A regulated side-payment between providers of different types was considered. A surprising finding at stable Nash equilibrium was that monopolistic providers (say a single ISP) receiving side payments actually had less income than the ?neutral? scenario without side-payments (side payments result in increased end-user prices by the payee which lowers end-user demand). Revenues from the application types which consumed the most bandwidth were naturally affected the most.The primary intellectual merit of this research has to do with the challenge of formulating tractable though realistic mathematical models of the cross-disciplinary elements of the macroscopic interactions among different entities participating in the Internet economy. Identified near-optimal strategies are tracked in the presence of naturally time-varying system parameters. Though a model may be simple, it often yields unexpectedly complex behavior (e.g., multiple Nash equilibria with differing stability qualities). Important real-world data and practical lessons will be identified in this research through the study of sensitivity of derived results to the different model parameters in play.One aspect of the broader impact of this research pertains to the enormous financial stakes involved in the network neutrality debate, and therefore the potential of this research to influence significantly Internet operations and architectural development even in the near term. Industry outreach is a significant part of this research, not only to keep abreast of current developments, but also to obtain first-hand relevant data that hopefully can be disseminated to the broader research community. Another aspect of the broader impact of this research is the development and dissemination of related "economics" teaching modules suitable for networking graduate courses, and the recruitment and training of students from under-represented minority groups in Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering.