In noncooperative networks avoiding design paradoxes

The exponential growth of computer networking demands massive upgrades of capacity in existing networks. Traditional capacity design methodologies, developed with the single-class networking paradigm in mind, overlook the noncooperative structure of modern networks. Consequently, such design approaches entail the danger of degraded performance when resources are added to a network, a phenomenon known as the Braess paradox. The present paper proposes methods for efficiently adding resources to a noncooperative network of general topology. It is shown that the paradox is avoided when resources are added across the network, rather than on a local scale, and when upgrades are focused on direct connections between sources and destinations. The relevance of these findings to modern networks is demonstrated