Quality of service provision in noncooperative networks with diverse user requirements

This paper studies the quality of service (QoS) provision problem in noncoo perative networks where applications or users are selfish and routers imple ment generalized processor sharing based packet scheduling. We formulate a model of QoS provision in noncooperative networks where users are given the freedom to choose both the service classes and traffic volume allocated, a nd heterogenous QoS preferences are captured by a user's utility function. We present a comprehensive analysis of the noncooperative multi-class QoS p rovision game, giving a complete characterization of Nash equilibria and th eir existence criteria, and show under what conditions they are Pareto- and system-optimal. We show that, in general, Nash equilibria need not exist, and when they do exist, they need not be Pareto- nor system-optimal. For ce rtain "resource-plentiful" systems, however, we show that the world indeed can be nice with Nash equilibria, Pareto optima, and system optima collapsi ng into a single class. We study the problem of facilitating effective QoS in systems with multi-dimensional QoS vectors containing both mean- and bur stiness-related QoS measures. We extend the game-theoretic analysis to mult i-dimensional QoS vector games and show under what conditions the aforement ioned results carry over. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserve d.