ISP business models in caching

Internet traffic volume is increasing and as a consequence, Internet content delivery is facing scalability issues. Different types of caching solutions improve this scalability. The incentives of different stakeholders to pay for the caching solutions are not known. However, it has been identified that Internet service providers (ISPs) need to be involved in the process of cache deployment due to their ownership of the network. Thus, this work first identifies the different business models of ISPs in a caching environment and utilizes game theory to evaluate these possible business models. Although ISP caching is potentially unstable, it turns out to be Pareto optimal at the right pricing, which encourages cooperation between content providers and ISPs.