A Price Dynamics in Bandwidth Markets for Point-to-point Connections

Abstract

We simulate a network of N routers and M network users making concurrent point-to-point connections by buying and selling router capacity from each other. The resources need to be acquired in complete sets, but there is only one spot market for each router. In order to describe the internal dynamics of the market, we model the observed prices by N-dimensional Ito-processes. Modeling using stochastic processes is novel in this context of describing interactions between end-users in a system with shared resources, and allows a standard set of mathematical tools to be applied. The derived models can also be used to price contingent claims on network capacity and thus to price complex network services such as quality of service levels, multicast, etc.