New Competition-Based Approach for Caching Popular Content in ICN

摘要

Improving the performance of the Internet, as part of the new generations networks, requires support for caching and multicast content delivery on each network cable. This new concept is called Information Centric Networking (ICN). In present paper, we consider a duopoly model of rational internet Service providers competing in ICN model where each ISP is motivated to cache content. Using a generalized Zipf distribution to model content popularity, we devise a game theoretic approach to determine caching and pricing strategies for each ISP. In turn, the subscribers' demand for the service of an ISP depends not only on the price and QoS of that ISP but also upon those proposed by all of its competitors. Through rigorous mathematical analysis, we prove existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium. An iterative and distributed algorithm based on best response dynamics are proposed to achieve the equilibrium point. Finally, extensive simulations show convergence of a proposed scheme to the Nash equilibrium and give some insights on how the game parameters may vary the price and QoS at Nash equilibrium.