Utility optimization-based bandwidth allocation for elastic and inelastic services in peer-to-peer networks

This paper considers reasonable bandwidth allocation for multiclass services in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, measures the satisfaction of each peer as a customer by a utility function when acquiring one service, and develops an optimization model for bandwidth allocation with the objective of utility maximization. Elastic services with concave utilities are first considered and the exact expression of optimal bandwidth allocation for each peer is deduced. In order to obtain an optimum in distributed P2P networks, we develop a gradient-based bandwidth allocation scheme and illustrate the performance with numerical examples. Then we investigate bandwidth allocation for inelastic services with sigmoidal utilities, which is a nonconvex optimization problem. In order to solve it, we analyze provider capacity provisioning for bandwidth allocation of inelastic services and modify the update rule for prices that service customers should pay. Numerical examples are finally given to illustrate that the improved scheme can also efficiently converge to the global optimum.