Are Utility, Price, and Satisfaction Resource Allocation Models Suitable for Large-scale Distributed Systems?

Computational, data, and service grids, peer to peer systems, and wireless communication systems are examples of open systems where the distinction between providers and consumers of resources is blurred. Individual members of the community contribute computing cycles, storage, services, and communication bandwidth to the pool of resources available to the entire community. While the popularity of such systems increases, their resource management models seldom take into account the utility for the consumers of the resources, and the incentives to provide resources. In this paper, we discuss a resource allocation model that takes into account the utility of the resources for the consumers and the pricing structure imposed by the providers. We show how a satisfaction function can express the preferences of the consumer both regarding the utility and the price of the resources. In our model, the brokers are mediating among the selfish interests of the consumers and the providers, and societal interests, such as efficient resource utilization in the system. We report on a simulation experiment to study the behavior of the system in steady state and in transient state.