Big Content Providers Weighing on Non-Neutrality?

Patrick Maillé (1, 2) , Bruno Tuffin (1)

1 DIONYSOS - Dependability Interoperability and perfOrmance aNalYsiS Of networkS
2 IMT Atlantique - SRCD - Département Systèmes Réseaux, Cybersécurité et Droit du numérique

There is a trend for big content providers such as Netflix and YouTube to give grades to ISPs, to incentivize those ISPs to improve at least the quality offered to their service. We design in this paper a model analyzing ISPs' optimal allocation strategies in a competitive context and in front of quality-sensitive users. We show that the optimal strategy is non-neutral, that is, it does not allocate bandwidth proportionally to the traffic share of content providers. On the other hand, we show that non-neutrality does not benefit ISPs but is surprisingly favorable to users' perceived quality.

Domaines: Recherche opérationnelle [math.OC]

Patrick Maillé, Bruno Tuffin. Big Content Providers Weighing on Non-Neutrality?. Netnomics: Economic Research and Electronic, 2021, 22 (1), pp.1-26. ⟨10.1007/s11066-021-09146-y⟩. ⟨hal-01851791⟩