A Competitive-Market Approach to Distributed Resource Allocation
Abstract
Resource allocation is an issue in any system for which resources are in short supply. In computer networks, the resources in question are bandwidth, buffer space, and processing time, and they are allocated at multiple scales of time and quantity (e.g. from a single user's packets over a 30 second interval to a network providers backbone capacity for a 1 year interval). For military networks and computers, these resources may be scarce or limited during attack, at remote sites, etc. Decisions about resource allocation should be made in accordance with some overall policy. In many instances, this policy is referred to as the "fairness" in making resource allocation decisions. A policy that is reasonable in one situation (e.g., "normally, everyone shares equally the available bandwidth') may be unsuitable in another situation (e.g., "in times of emergency, high priority tasks get their bandwidth requests satisfied before low priority tasks are considered"). In this report, we summarize the progress we have made in applying resource pricing principles to network and computer resource allocation. In each section we explain what we did, and why it is useful, followed by a list of the "outputs" of that effort. We conclude by summarizing the major findings, and describing some future directions and open problems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA410933
Entities
People
- Douglas S. Reeves
Organizations
- North Carolina State University