Abstract: This tutorial gives a primer on the microeconomics of sharing a pooled resource like Internet bandwidth. This knowledge is then used in 2 ways:

1. To assess how the economics has led to unintended consequence, given today's resource sharing protocols: TCP, weighted fair queuing, volume capping and deep packet inspection (and similar problems with the recent proposals XCP & RCP).
2. To motivate an approach to resource sharing based on understanding of the economic drivers and pitfalls. Kelly's proposal to use Floyd's Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) for pricing will be explained, as well as the recent re-ECN proposal. Further unintended consequences of these approaches will be outlined, including potential market failures.

First part

Second part

Other formats :

• pdf slides
• high quality MPEG4 :part 1 part 2
• medium quality Quicktime : part 1 part 2
• low quality Quicktime : part 1 part 2

This presentation was recorded during the first Trilogy Future Internet summer school held in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium in August 2009. The videos and the slides are © Bob Briscoe, 2009. Please contact the author for any republication.