Research on economic mechanisms and incentives for technologies of future Internet

Abstract

This dissertation delves into various aspects about the adoption of new protocols in today‘s Internet. The deployment and adoption of Internet protocols differ from the diffusion of end user-centred innovations, such as consumer-products, since the Internet is a complex system consisting of different stakeholders with conflicting interests.It is suggested that the Internet architecture should be flexible enough to sufficiently incorporate stakeholders‘ preferences, the so-called ―design for tussle‖ principle. We analyse the proposed ―design for tussle‖ principle by investigating selected protocols of current Internet and we relate adoption issues to their compatibility with this principle. Although tussle-aware design is very important for the long-term evolution of Internet, it is not sufficient condition to ensure the adoption of a certain protocol.Apart from the tussle-aware design, we consider several factors affecting the adoption of a new protocol. Based on these factors, we propose an adoption framework for Internet protocols, which can be used as a roadmap for analysing their potential deployment and adoption by stakeholders.We concentrate on emerging protocols for the Internet intending to solve bandwidth allocation issues better; Multipath TCP (MPTCP), as well as protocols for information exposure of the network congestion. We present their basic operation, and we investigate how such mechanisms incorporate the tussles on bandwidth sharing and resource allocation into the Internet.Moreover, we apply the aforementioned adoption framework to these protocols in order to give a broader picture of the issues surrounding their adoption. We investigate the new challenges for the involved stakeholders, the viability of the different deployment scenarios, as well as the business models that may be enabled. Finally, we consider how to give the right incentives to the involved stakeholders for adopting these proposed Internet protocols.