ITR: Economics of Network Pricing and Resource Provisioning in a Competitive Market

定价作为一种缓解互联网拥塞的工具已被广泛研究。然而，在许多现有文献中，定价被视为激励终端用户以使得以公平的方式共享网络资源的方式进行自我调节。这种定价观点植根于凸规划和对偶理论，它将资源的价格等同于增加一个资源单位的系统效用的增量收益。然而，在这种流行的观点中，价格作为互联网服务提供商(ISP)可能的收入来源的影响通常被忽视。在这个为期三年的项目中，我们将从一个新的角度来研究定价，一个最大化的运营商的收入。该研究计划还将研究这种主动定价方案对网络客户的影响。智力优势：在本项目背景下开展的研究有望在定价方案和通信网络资源配置的方法和设计方面取得重大进展，并在静态和动态博弈理论、学习算法和分布式计算理论方面取得一些新的基础成果。广泛影响：该项目将开发一门新的研究生级别的博弈论课程，面向工科学生。本课程将结合博弈论在网络经济模型中的几个应用。在招募妇女和其他任职人数不足的群体为研究生方面成绩良好的专业人士，将集中努力让这些学生参与拟议的研究活动。

Pricing has been extensively studied as a tool to relieve congestion in the Internet. In much of the prior literature, however, pricing is viewed as an incentive to the end users to self-regulate in a manner such that the network resources are shared in a fair manner. This view of pricing, which has its roots in convex programming and duality theory, equates the price of a resource with the incremental benefit to the system utility of adding one unit of the resource. However, the impact of price as a possible revenue stream for the Internet Service Provider (ISP) is usually ignored in this prevailing point of view. This three-year program, we will study pricing from a new perspective, one of maximizing the revenue of ISPs. The research proposal will also study the impact of such an active pricing scheme on the customers of the network.Intellectual Merits: Research to be carried out in the context of this project is expected to lead to major advances in the methodology and design of pricing schemes and resource provisioning in communication networks, as well as to some new fundamental results in the theories of static and dynamic games, learning algorithms, and distributed computation.Broader Impact: This project will develop a new graduate-level course on game theory, geared toward engineering students. The course will incorporate several applications of game theory in network economic models. The PIs, who have a good record of accomplishment in recruiting women and other under-represented groups as graduate students, will focus their efforts in involving these students in the proposed research activities.