Exploring Possible Strategies for Competitions between Autonomous Systems

Autonomous systems (ASes) in the Internet structure are administrated by separate economic entities. They often meet direct or indirect competitions with each other when providing transit services to the same customer that is multihomed to them. In this paper, we explore possible strategies to enhance one´s competition strength against other rivals by juggling AS path in routes advertised to neighbors without violating routing safety. Our strategies indicate that a provider can simply shorten or prolong AS path to achieve the aim. Moreover, we propose novel methods to help a provider defeating other competitors even if its routes are assigned lower local preference by its customers. We also evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies on a real Internet topology. It shows valuable use for network operators to get more market share and financial gains from multihomed customers.