Talk Abstract: Vertical expansion in the Internet industry has led to new tussles among network service providers along previously distinct interfaces and models for network interconnection. An examination of the evolution of the loci of competition in the Internet industry reveals how different types of network service providers attempt to define and exercise their respective market powers. It also points to likely structural outcomes of these tussles, and implications for competitive entry and innovation.

Talk Abstract: This talk will review the current situation with respect to ISP interconnection, in particular interconnection between CDNs and access providers. As the recent dispute between Comcast and Level3 illustrates, there are differing views as to how to think about payment (or not) for this sort of interconnection. I will argue that payment from a CDN to an access provider is not in and of itself evidence of unreasonable market power, and argue that the complex patters of interconnection in the Internet limit the range of bargaining outcomes among the parties. I will argue that the imposition of usage tiers will shift the bargaining power of the parties in favor of the access provider.

This is work presented at TPRC 2011.

Talk Title: Addressing and Routing for Scalability

Talk Abstract: Abstract not provided

Talk Abstract: Mostly providing some context about the goals of this workshop.

Talk Abstract: Abstract not provided

Interested in Discussing: Peering, Transit, Partial Transit, Economics of large networks

Talk Abstract: A majority of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) support connectivity to the entire Internet by transiting their traffic via other providers. Although the transit prices per Mbps decline steadily, the overall transit costs of these ISPs remain high or even increase, due to the traffic growth. The discontent of the ISPs with the high transit costs has yielded notable innovations such as peering, content distribution networks, multicast, and peer-to-peer localization. While the above solutions tackle the problem by reducing the transit traffic, this paper explores a novel approach that reduces the transit costs without altering the traffic. In the proposed CIPT (Cooperative IP Transit), multiple ISPs cooperate to jointly purchase IP (Internet Protocol) transit in bulk. The aggregate transit costs decrease due to the economies-of-scale effect of typical subadditive pricing as well as burstable billing: not all ISPs transit their peak traffic during the same period. To distribute the aggregate savings among the CIPT partners, we propose Shapley-value sharing of the CIPT transit costs. Using public data about IP traffic of 264 ISPs and transit prices, we quantitatively evaluate CIPT and show that significant savings can be achieved, both in relative and absolute terms.

We also discuss the organizational embodiment, relationship with transit providers, traffic confidentiality, and other aspects of CIPT.

Interested in Discussing: -Competition-cooperation balance in the Internet ecosystem;
-IP transit as a profitable source of ISP revenue;
-prefix deaggregation as a profitable activity;
-incentives and arrangements for paid peering;
-strategic economic behaviors of ISPs;
-dynamics of Internet topology and traffic

Talk Abstract: Mobile access competition is evolving into multiple directions. Local area wireless (WiFI) and wide area wireless behave fundamentally differently.

Further, the wide area wireless is dividing into vertical (single-SIM, bundled, oligopoly, e.g. the US) and horizontal (multi-SIM, unbundled, competitive, e.g India) markets that again behave fundamentally differently. It is envisioned that these differences in access competition imply differences in congestion management strategies both between access operators and within a single operator's access network. On the other hand congestion management in access and core depend on each other, which motivates an analysis of its own. This talk tries to bring some light on this logic based on earlier work on multipath protocols and cognitive radio.

Interested in Discussing: - the need of economics studies at IRTF/IETF
- the growing role and impact of mobile traffic within IETF
- the specific research methods that apply to protocol economics

Talk Abstract: This is an open discussion topic, as I really am not confident of this in terms of the application of standard economic dogma to the situation, and it is a revisit to a topic that was discussed in the first workshop. However the situation is perhaps even more dire than it was a couple of years ago, and the relatively static position of IPv6 take-up illustrates that there appears to be no natural incentives to drive the access carriage market sector to offer IPv6 services. I'd like to discuss this as an open discussion.

Interested in Discussing: IPv4 Address Markets and Market Failure

Talk Abstract: Extending the economic model of the Internet proposed by Ma et al., (CoNEXT'08) we use various datasets to compute what a fair sharing of profits on the Internet would look like. Our attempt here is to add some quantification to the network neutrality debate.

Interested in Discussing: network neutrality

Talk Abstract: We propose a dynamic agent-based network formation model for the Internet at the Autonomous System (AS) level. The proposed model, called GENESIS, employs simple provider selection and peering strategies which capture the salient features of the aforementioned processes in reality. The ASes act in a myopic and decentralized manner to optimize a cost-related fitness function. GENESIS also incoroporates key factors that affect network formation dynamics: highly skewed traffic matrix, policy-based routing, geographic co-location constraints, and the costs of transit/peering agreements. Unlike analytical game-theoretic models which focus on proving the existence of equilibria, GENESIS allows us to actually compute distinct equilibria i.e. networks. The equilibria in GENESIS are highly sensitive to initial conditions and the order in which ASes act which implies that we cannot predict the state of an individual AS in the Internet. We find that GENESIS sample paths that do not converge always involve tier-1 ASes.

We show that such oscillatory sample paths, which constitute about 10% of the runs, resemble tier-1 peering disputes often seen in practice. We also present a variation of the default GENESIS model in which ASes myopically choose their peering strategy to optimize their fitness. We show that under such circumstances Open peering strategy acts as an attractor in the peering strategies domain. Interestingly, we find that this behavior has a negative impact on the fitness of most transit providers. Finally, we propose simple rules to alleviate this situation.

Interested in Discussing: How should transit providers and content providers deal with access providers (ISPs) since there is no way to route around them to reach the eye-balls?

Talk Abstract: Network neutrality and the role of regulation on the Internet have been heavily debated in recent times. Amongst the various definitions of network neutrality, we focus on the one which prohibits paid prioritization of content and we present an analytical treatment of the topic. We develop a model of the Internet ecosystem in terms of three primary players: consumers, ISPs and content providers. Our analysis looks at this issue from the point of view of the consumer, and we describe the desired state of the system as one which maximizes consumer surplus. By analyzing different scenarios of monopoly and competition, we obtain different conclusions on the desirability of regulation. We also introduce the notion of a Public Option ISP, an ISP that carries traffic in a network neutral manner. Our major findings are (i) in a monopolistic scenario, network neutral regulations benefit consumers; however, the introduction of a Public Option ISP is even better for consumers, as it aligns the interests of the monopolistic ISP with the consumer surplus and (ii) in an oligopolistic situation, the presence of a Public Option ISP is again preferable to network neutral regulations, although the presence of competing price-discriminating ISPs provides the most desirable situation for the consumers.

Talk Abstract: It's possible to chararacterise the business model of peering as evidence of two sided market - a model that identifies network benefits between partners addressing end-users.

We briefly examine the network benefits to companies participating in peering transaction, then question the impact on end-user experience of network latency performance.

Talk Abstract: Abstract not provided

Talk Abstract: Abstract not provided

Talk Abstract: Abstract not provided

Interested in Discussing: -General Internet economic and demographic metrics and methodologies.
-Economic considerations that influence adoption patterns for different Internet protocols and protocol extensions (including TCP/IP itself).

Talk Abstract: Abstract not provided

Interested in Discussing: IPv6 technology change

Talk Abstract: It's possible to chararacterise the business model of peering as evidence of two sided market - a model that identifies network benefits between partners addressing end-users.

We briefly examine the network benefits to companies participating in peering transaction, then question the impact on end-user experience of network latency performance.

Interested in Discussing: peering/transit & caching, internet access competition.

Interested in Discussing: How can the Internet survive econommically as video traffic increases dramatically?

Interested in Discussing: Emerging settlement scenarios to retro-fit existing settlement-free relationships.