Optimal routing control: Repeated game approach

Communication networks shared by selfish users are considered and modeled as noncooperative repeated games. Each user is interested only in optimizing its own performance by controlling the routing of its load. We investigate the existence of a Nash equilibrium point (NEP) that achieves the system-wide optimum cost. The existence of a subgame-perfect NEP that not only achieves the system-wide optimum cost but also yields a cost for each user no greater than its stage game NEP cost is shown for two-node multiple link networks. It is shown that more general networks where all users have the same source-destination pair have a subgame-perfect NEP that achieves the minimum total system cost, under a mild technical condition. It is shown that general networks with users having multiple source-destination pairs do not necessarily have such an NEP.