Computer Science Faculty Publications Copyright (c) 2013 Connecticut College All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub Recent documents in Computer Science Faculty Publications en-us Mon, 01 Apr 2013 08:15:18 PDT 3600 Evolutionary Solutions and Internet Applications for Algorithmic Game Theory http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/11 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/11 Tue, 10 Jul 2012 06:51:40 PDT The growing pervasiveness of the internet has created a new class of algorithmic problems: those in which the strategic interaction of autonomous, self-interested entities must be accounted for. So motivated, we seek to (1) use game theoretic models and techniques to study practical problems in load balancing, data streams and internet traffic congestion, and (2) demonstrate the usefulness of evolutionary game theory’s adaptive model as an analytical and evaluative tool.

First we consider the evolutionary game theory concept of stochastic stability, and propose the price of stochastic anarchy as an alternative to the price of anarchy for quantifying the cost of having no central authority. Unlike Nash equilibria, stochastically stable states are the result of natural dynamics of large populations of computationally bounded agents, and are resilient to small perturbations from ideal play. To illustrate the utility of stochastic stability, we study the load balancing game on related machines, which has an unbounded price of anarchy, even in the case of two jobs and two machines. We show that in contrast, even in the general case, the price of stochastic anarchy is bounded.

Next, we propose auction-based mechanisms for admission control of continuous queries to a Data Stream Management System. When submitting a query, each user also submits a bid: how much she is willing to pay for her query to run. Our mechanisms must admit queries and set payments in a way that maximizes system revenue while incentivizing customers to use the system honestly. We propose several manipulation-resistant payment mechanisms and prove that one guarantees a profit close to a standard profit benchmark, and the others perform well experimentally.

Finally, we study the long standing problem of congestion control at bottleneck routers on the internet. We examine the effectiveness of commonly-used queuing policies when each network endpoint is self-interested and has no information about the other endpoints’ actions or preferences. By employing evolutionary game theory, we find that while bottleneck routers face heavy congestion at stochastically stable states under policies being currently deployed, a practical policy that was recently proposed yields fair and efficient conditions with no congestion.

]]> Christine Chung Online Bottleneck Matching http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/10 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/10 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 08:02:44 PDT Barbara Anthony et al. Completion Time Scheduling and the WSRPT Algorithm http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/9 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/9 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 08:01:33 PDT Christine Chung et al. The Power of Fair Pricing Mechanisms http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/8 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/8 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:59:34 PDT We explore the revenue capabilities of truthful, monotone (“fair”) allocation and pricing functions for resource constrained auction mechanisms within a general framework that encompasses unlimited supply auctions, knapsack auctions, and auctions with general non-decreasing convex production cost functions. We study and compare the revenue obtainable in each fair pricing scheme to the profit obtained by the ideal omniscient multi-price auction. We show that for capacitated knapsack auctions, no constant pricing scheme can achieve any approximation to the optimal profit, but proportional pricing is as powerful as general monotone pricing. In addition, for auction settings with arbitrary bounded non-decreasing convex production cost functions, we present a proportional pricing mechanism which achieves a poly-logarithmic approximation. Unlike existing approaches, all of our mechanisms have fair (monotone) prices, and all of our competitive analysis is with respect to the optimal profit extraction.

]]> Christine Chung et al. SRPT Is 1.86-competitive for Completion Time Scheduling http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/7 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/7 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:58:25 PDT Christine Chung et al. Admission Control Mechanisms for Continuous Queries in the Cloud http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/6 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/6 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:57:35 PDT Christine Chung et al. On the Price of Stability for Undirected Network Design http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/5 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/5 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:56:24 PDT Giorgos Christodoulou et al. Stochastic Stability in Internet Router Congestion Games http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/4 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/4 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:55:36 PDT Christine Chung et al. The Online Transportation Problem: On the Exponential Boost of One Extra Server http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/2 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/2 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:53:17 PDT Christine Chung et al. The Price of Stochastic Anarchy http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/1 http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/1 Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:51:49 PDT Christine Chung et al.