Distributed ALOHA game with partially rule-based cooperative, greedy, and vigilante players

Many pervasive protocols which continue to be used in distributed/decentralized communication networking today fundamentally rely on “cooperative behavior” of the participating end-hosts/users. In particular, TCP in layer 4 and MAC in layer 2 of the OSI protocol hierarchy prescribe distributed transmission back-off rules in response to detected congestion and, in the case of some MAC protocols, randomized ramp-up to desynchronize demand (again, in decentralized fashion) and prevent congestion during recovery. Such important flow and congestion control mechanisms can be undermined through the spread of malware targeting them, or deliberately by the end-users themselves employing non-cooperative protocol modifications in order to take advantage of the expected cooperative behavior of most other users, e.g., “turbo” TCP.