Game theoretic bandwidth procurement mechanisms in live P2P streaming systems

With the dramatic growth of Internet video streaming applications, resource provisioning for video streaming systems to satisfy their upload bandwidth deficit is a challenging task. The design of incentive mechanisms for taking advantage of unused upload capability of helper peers is proven to be a viable, cost-effective solution for this problem. The existing incentive mechanisms for video streaming systems do not consider the hierarchical nature of helper-server interactions, the limited budget of server to procure the needed bandwidth, and limited information of helpers about the other parties in the system. To address these issues, we designed cooperation mechanisms for two different cases: in the full-information case where the server has the full control over the amount of payments to each helper, a Stackelberg helping game is formulated in which the server as leader determines the amount of payment for each helper and then, helpers as followers decide on their amount of contributed bandwidth accordingly. We characterize the Stackelberg Equilibrium (SE) point of game in which the server shares the benefits of bandwidth sharing with the helpers through a market mechanism. In the partial information case where the helpers’ cost and utility functions are private and unknown to the server, we propose a budget-limited reverse auction in which the helpers, in contrast to the former case, announce the lowest price at which they are willing to sell their upload bandwidth first and the server then selects a subset of the helpers and pays them proportional to their contributions. The results of extensive simulations reveal that the mechanisms are truthful and result in lower server workload and higher peers’ streaming rate and delivery ratio.