Applying the repeated game framework to multiparty networked applications

This thesis presents repeated game analysis as an important and practical tool for networked application and protocol designers. Incentives are a potential concern for a large number of networked applications. Well-studied examples include routing and peer-to-peer networks. To the extent that incentives significantly impact the outcome of a system, system designers require tools and frameworks to better understand how their design decisions impact these incentive concerns. Repetition is a prevalent and critical aspect of many networking applications and protocols. Most networked protocols and architectures seek to optimize performance over a longer timescale and many have explicit support for repetition. Similarly, most players in networked applications are interested in longer horizons, whether they be firms building a business or typical individuals trying to use a system. Fortunately, the study of repeated interaction between multiple self-interested parties, repeated games, is a well-understood and developed area of economic and game theoretic research. A key conclusion from that literature is that the outcome of the repeated game can differ qualitatively from that of the one-shot game. Nonetheless, the tools of repeated games have rarely if ever been brought to bear on networking problems. Our work presents the descriptive and prescriptive power of repeated game analysis by making specific contributions to several relevant networking problems.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Afergan, Michael Moïse

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David Clark.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34655

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34655