A revenue-rewarding scheme of providing incentive for cooperative proxy caching for media streaming systems

Network entities cooperating together can improve system performance of media streaming. In this paper, we address the "incentive issue" of a cooperative proxy caching system and how to motivate each proxy to provide cache space to the system. To encourage proxies to participate, we propose a "revenue-rewarding scheme" to credit the cooperative proxies according to the resources they contribute. A game-theoretic model is used to analyze the interactions among proxies under the revenue-rewarding scheme. We propose two cooperative game settings that lead to optimal situations. In particular, (1) We propose a distributed incentive framework for peers to participate in resource contribution for media streaming; (2) Proxies are encouraged to cooperate under the revenue-rewarding scheme; (3) Profit and social welfare are maximized in these cooperative games; and (4) Cost-effective resource allocation is achieved in these cooperative games. Large scale simulation is carried out to validate and verify the merits of our proposed incentive schemes.