Competitive routing in multiuser communication networks

Abstract

We consider a communication network shared by several selfish users. Each user seeks to optimize its own performance by controlling the routing of its given flow demand, giving rise to a noncooperative game. We investigate the Nash equilibrium of such systems. For a two-node multiple links system, uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium is proven under reasonable convexity conditions. It is shown that this Nash equilibrium point possesses interesting monotonicity properties. For general networks, these convexity conditions are not sufficient for guaranteeing uniqueness, and a counterexample is presented. Nonetheless, uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium for general topologies is established under various assumptions.