Fair and Efficient Allocation of Resources in the Internet

This chapter proposes mechanisms to mediate the allocation of resources in networks shared by multiple types of applications as the Internet today. Social Choice Theory and Welfare Economics provide the foundations for the decision criteria used. Three different mechanisms are studied: Utility-Based Bandwidth Allocation (UBBA), Utility-Based Admission Control (UBAC) and Utility-Based Scheduling (UBS). Such mechanisms can be employed to sort out trade-offs in various resource allocation problems found in the Internet environment.