Title :
How to find Nash equilibria with extreme total latency in network congestion games?
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Math., Univ. of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany
Abstract :
We study the complexity of finding extreme pure Nash equilibria in symmetric network congestion games and analyse how it depends on the graph topology and the number of users. In our context best and worst equilibria are those with minimum respectively maximum total latency. We establish that both problems can be solved by a Greedy algorithm with a suitable tie breaking rule on parallel links. On series-parallel graphs finding a worst Nash equilibrium is NP-hard for two or more users while finding a best one is solvable in polynomial time for two users and NP-hard for three or more. Additionally we establish NP-hardness in the strong sense for the problem of finding a worst Nash equilibrium on a general acyclic graph.
Keywords :
computational complexity; game theory; graph theory; greedy algorithms; minimax techniques; network theory (graphs); NP-hard problem; best equilibria; general acyclic graph; greedy algorithm; maximum total latency; parallel link; polynomial time; series-parallel graph topology; symmetric network congestion game; tie breaking rule; worst Nash equilibria; Adaptive systems; Costs; Degradation; Delay; Game theory; Greedy algorithms; Mathematical model; Nash equilibrium; Network topology; Polynomials; complexity; extreme equilibria; network congestion game; total latency;
Conference_Titel :
Game Theory for Networks, 2009. GameNets '09. International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Istanbul
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-4176-1
Electronic_ISBN :
978-1-4244-4177-8
DOI :
10.1109/GAMENETS.2009.5137397