The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Research on the application of game theory in the context of networking has focused on non-cooperative games, where the selfish agents cannot reach a binding agreement on the way they would share the infrastructure. Many approaches have been proposed for mitigating the typically inefficient operating points. However, in a growing number of networking scenarios selfish agents are able to communicate and reach an agreement. Hence, the degradation of performance should be considered at an operating point of a cooperative game, e.g., the Nash bargaining solution, core or nucleolus. Accordingly, in this talk our goal is to lay foundations for the application of cooperative game theory to fundamental problems in networking, with a focus on routing. Depending on the scenario, we will reach conclusions on how cooperation among agents affects their own performance as well as that of the system. Finally, we will discuss network design guidelines that follow from our findings.

PhD seminar, under the supervision of Prof. Ariel Orda.