Economic Issues in Distributed Computing

Dedication To Yuning and Kayla, for always supporting my endeavors. v Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor and dissertation chairman, Andrew B. Whinston who played an indispensable role in my intellectual development. I am truly grateful for his thoughtful insights into research as well as the invaluable constant support along the difficult trail of finishing my dissertation. I am also grateful for the other members of my dissertation committee: Dr. fellow students from the CREC research center. They have provided me great guidance, support, and advice on my research in general. Finally, I am sincerely grateful to my wife Yuning and daughter Kayla for their love and support which helped me overcome all hurdles in finishing my PhD study. On the Internet, one of the essential characteristics of electronic commerce is the integration of large-scale computer networks and business practices. Commercial servers are connected through open and complex communication technologies, and online consumers access the services with virtually unpredictable behavior. Both of them as well as the e-Commerce infrastructure are vulnerable to cyber attacks. Among the various network security problems, the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is a unique example to illustrate the risk of commercial network applications. Using a massive junk traffic, literally anyone on the Internet can launch a DDoS attack to flood and shutdown an eCommerce website. Cooperative technological solutions for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are already available, yet organizations in the best position to implement them lack incentive to do so, and the victims of DDoS attacks cannot find effective methods to motivate the organizations. Chapter 1 discusses two components of the technological solutions to DDoS attacks: cooperative filtering and cooperative traffic smoothing by caching, and then analyzes the broken incentive chain in each of these technological vii solutions. As a remedy, I propose usage-based pricing and Capacity Provision Networks, which enable victims to disseminate enough incentive along attack paths to stimulate cooperation against DDoS attacks. Chapter 2 addresses possible Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks toward the wireless Internet including the Wireless Extended Internet, the Wireless Portal Network, and the Wireless Ad Hoc network. I propose a conceptual model for defending against DDoS attacks on the wireless Internet, which incorporates both cooperative technological solutions and economic incentive mechanisms built on usage-based fees. Cost-effectiveness is also addressed through an illustrative implementation scheme using Policy Based Networking (PBN). By investigating both technological and economic difficulties …