A case study of internet fast lane

We study the interaction between a service provider (SP) and content providers (CPs) when the SP can offer higher quality-of-service (QoS) to content service under a private agreement with the CPs. We model the interaction between the providers as a Stackelberg game with the SP as the leader and examine how the selfish nature of the providers affects the resulting QoS and social efficiency. Our findings suggest that the social efficiency is not compromised at the Nash equilibrium of Stackelberg game compared to social optimum. Moreover, we study the set of CPs with which the SP will sign a contract and the order in which it will approach them in order to maximize its own profit.