Bernardo A. Huberman and Rajan M. Lukose
@ARTICLE {,
AUTHOR = "Bernardo A. Huberman and Rajan M. Lukose",
TITLE = "Social Dilemmas and Internet Congestion",
JOURNAL = "Science",
VOLUME = "277",
PAGES = "535-537",
MONTH = "July 25",
YEAR = "1997"}
See also the Research News Story, "Model Explains Internet 'Storms'" on page 477.
Abstract
Because the Internet is a public good and its numerous users are not charged in
proportion to their use, it appears rational for individuals to consume bandwidth greedily
while thinking that their actions have little effect on the overall performance of the
Internet. Because every individual can reason this way, the whole Internet's performance
can degrade considerably, which makes everyone worse off. An analysis of the
congestions created by such dilemmas predicts that they are intermittent in nature with
definite statistical properties leading to short-lived spikes in congestion. Internet
latencies were measured over a wide range of conditions and locations and were found to
confirm these predictions, thus providing a possible microscopic mechanism for the
observed intermittent congestions of the Internet.
link to Science-on-Line
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