Enable User Choice in Routing Xiaowei Yang UC Irvine NSF FIND PI meeting, June

Outline An economic perspective on the importance of user-choice in routing Why we can stop worrying about user- controlled routes

Economic landscape of the broadband market Both DSL and Cable are non-common carriers In August 2005, DSL was classified as an information service. In March 2002, Cable was classified as an information service. The Brand X case in June 2005 Facility-based competition is duopoly at best Incumbent Cable and DSL have 99.5 percent of all broadband consumers Source: FCC

Rising problems signify insufficient competition The debate over net neutrality Ed Whitacre: Now what they [Internet upstarts like Google, MSN, Vonage, and others] would like to do is use my pipes free, but I aint going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it, says Whitacre. So theres going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion theyre using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? Lack of innovation at the network layer No end-to-end quality of service

The resurrection of Ma Bell

A duopoly Internet? CablePhone Cable backbonePhone backbone If access providers export their market power to the backbone market, the backbone market may become less competitive as well The list of problems can only grow longer Net neutrality, lack of innovation… Choose one out of two!

Let User Choose Provider-Level Routes User choice stimulates competition and competition fosters innovation User choice may preserve the competitiveness in the backbone market, and reward innovative providers at&t Local ISP cogent

Outline An economic perspective on the importance of user-choice in routing Why we can stop worrying about user- controlled routes

Challenges Why would at&t allow it? May require non-technical solutions User-controlled routes are problematic Security! Stability Policy Pricing Scalability Overhead

R7 B4B3 R4 R10 B2 R1 R3 N2 N3 B1 R2 N18 R5 R6 R9 R8 N17 N16 N15 N14 N13 N11 N10 N8 N7 N6 N5 N4 N12 X Scalability N9 N1 core Bob Alice Cindy

A pair of addresses to represent a route R7 B4B3 R4 R10 B2 R1 R3 N2 N3 B1 R2 N18 R5 R6 R9 R8 N17 N16 N15 N14 N13 N11 N10 N8 N7 N6 N5 N4 N12 N9 N1 core Bob Alice Cindy Low overhead Alleviate the problem of source address spoofing

Conclusion User choice in routing has the potential to preserve competition in the backbone market Technical challenges can be addressed at&t Local ISP cogent

The price of Anarchy [Roughgarden05] ISP1 ISP4 ISP3 ISP2 C(x) = x C(x) = 1 1/2 … 1

Not as bad as in theory! In realistic network topologies selfish routing and optimal routing are comparable [Qiu03] ISP1 ISP4 ISP3 ISP2 C(x) …