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Combinatorial double-sided auctions for network bandwidth allocation: a budget-balanced and decentralized approach

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Abstract

Telecommunication networks are now an interconnection of competitive operators that need to cooperate to ensure end-to-end delivery of traffic. Inter-domain agreements have to be performed, and pricing is seen as a relevant way to reward intermediate domains for forwarding the traffic of others. In previous works, Vickrey–Clark–Groves (VCG) double-sided auctions have been applied because they provide proper incentives, lead to an efficient use of the network, and verify other relevant characteristics. However, it has been highlighted that the resource allocation schemes applying VCG auction are neither budget-balanced nor solvable in a decentralized way. In this paper, we apply combinatorial double-sided auction to allocate the bandwidth resources over nodes. While previous works were using a centralized algorithm, we use here a new pricing rule, leading to a new budget-balanced pricing scheme for which allocations and charges can be computed in a decentralized way. We also analyze the impact of this scheme on the game over declared costs of nodes.

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Notes

  1. The resource allocation mechanism is said to be socially optimal or efficient if it maximizes the sum of utility functions of all users involved in the game. In networking literature, social optimality and efficiency are often used interchangeably [3].

  2. Convergence to a Nash equilibrium is not always ensured though [29].

  3. Note that agents, nodes, or autonomous systems are used interchangeable in our paper.

  4. \(\hat{y}_r(j)\) may be different from \(\hat{y}_r\) of the source node, depending on its own demand traffic to destination on route r and its own maximum supplies.

  5. It can be counted in algorithm by the number of neighbors in which v k received the same request message to a destination.

  6. Number of links in the shortest path between the farthest pair of nodes.

  7. A bid fee ϵ is chosen as maximal gain of nodes from previous oscillation, where u osc is the net pay-off during oscillation.

  8. Aggregated utilities of the sellers.

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Acknowledgements

This work was done in the framework of the INRIA and Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Joint Research Lab on Self Organized Networks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alcatel-Lucent INRIA Common Laboratory, Rennes, France

    Hoang-Hai Tran

  2. INRIA Rennes—Bretagne Atlantique, Rennes, France

    Bruno Tuffin

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  1. Hoang-Hai Tran
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  2. Bruno Tuffin
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Correspondence to Hoang-Hai Tran.

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Tran, HH., Tuffin, B. Combinatorial double-sided auctions for network bandwidth allocation: a budget-balanced and decentralized approach. Ann. Telecommun. 67, 227–240 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12243-011-0250-2

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