Cournot Game of ISP under Net Neutrality

Abstract

Network neutrality has been a very sensitive topic of discussion all over the world. In this paper, we study the competition between ISPs under two-regime non-neutral network and neutral network. We interpret non-neutral network when an internet service provider is privileged by the Content Provider (CP) in order to propose a high quality of service for a given content. Competition among ISPs modeled as a Cournot game. Noncooperative game is utilized to study the interactions among ISPs. On the one hand, each ISP decide his policies of Quality of Service (QoS) in order to maximize his profit. In turn, the end-users demand for the service of an ISP depends not only on their strategies, but also upon those proposed by all of its competitors. A unique Nash equilibrium is established, through rigorous mathematical analysis. Furthermore, we introduce a learning algorithm that may lead ISPs to learn their strategic QoS in a complete distributed manner. In order to quantify how efficient is the Nash equilibrium point, a detailed analysis of the Price of Anarchy is adopted to ensure the performance of the system at equilibrium. Extensive simulations show the convergence to the Nash equilibrium and give some insights on how the game parameters may vary the ISPs revenue, demand and policies.