Internet service providers (ISPs) have a variety of quality attributes that determine their attractiveness for data transmission, ranging from quality-of-service metrics such as jitter to security properties such as the presence of DDoS defense systems. ISPs improve these attributes in line with their profit objective, i.e., up to the level that maximizes revenue from attracted traffic while minimizing attribute-related cost, all in the context of alternative offers by competing ISPs. In today's Internet, this quality competition mostly takes place between ISPs that are next-hop options for a given destination. In contrast, emerging path-aware networks enable end-points to select entire inter-domain forwarding paths, and thus intensify ISP competition. In this paper, we analyze how path-aware networking changes the competition dynamics in the Internet, and how path quality and ISP profits are affected as a result. To that end, we develop a game-theoretic model in which ISPs (i) affect path quality via multiple attributes that entail costs, (ii) constitute paths together with other selfish ISPs, and (iii) are in competition with alternative paths when attracting traffic. The model enables an extensive theoretical analysis, surprisingly showing that end-point path selection can have both positive and negative effects on path quality and ISP profits, depending on the network topology and the cost structure of ISPs. However, a large-scale simulation, which draws on real-world data to set model parameters, shows that the positive effects will likely prevail in practice: Compared to a single-path scenario, the prevalence of quality attributes increases by at least 50%, and 75% of ISPs improve their profit if the end-points can choose among 5 paths towards any destination.

翻译：互联网服务提供商（ISP）拥有多种决定其数据传输吸引力的质量属性，范围从抖动等服务质量指标到是否存在DDoS防御系统等安全属性。ISP根据其利润目标改进这些属性，即在吸引流量的收入最大化与属性相关成本最小化之间达到平衡，同时考虑竞争对手提供的替代方案。在当今互联网中，这种质量竞争主要发生在针对特定目的地提供下一跳选项的ISP之间。相比之下，新兴的路径感知网络使端点能够选择完整的域间转发路径，从而加剧了ISP之间的竞争。本文分析了路径感知网络如何改变互联网中的竞争动态，以及路径质量和ISP利润如何受到影响。为此，我们开发了一个博弈论模型，其中ISP（i）通过多种需要成本的属性影响路径质量，（ii）与其他自私的ISP共同构成路径，以及（iii）在吸引流量时与替代路径展开竞争。该模型支持广泛的理论分析，令人惊讶地表明，端点路径选择对路径质量和ISP利润可能产生积极和消极两种影响，具体取决于网络拓扑和ISP的成本结构。然而，基于真实世界数据设置模型参数的大规模模拟显示，积极影响在实践中更可能占主导地位：与单路径场景相比，如果端点可以针对任何目的地选择5条路径，质量属性的普及率至少提升50%，且75%的ISP利润得到改善。