Techno-economic feasibility analysis of Internet protocols: Framework and tools

A multitude of Internet protocols are developed in the Internet Engineering Task Force to solve the challenges with the existing protocols and to fulfill the requirements of emerging application areas. However, most of them fail to achieve their goals due to limited adoption. A significant reason for non-adoption seems to be that the potential adopters’ incentives for adoption are not understood and taken into account during the protocol development. This paper addresses this problem by developing a conceptual framework for analyzing the techno-economic feasibility of Internet protocols already during their development. The framework is based on the experiences collected during several protocol case studies and an extensive literature review. It focuses on analyzing the economic incentives of the relevant stakeholders and also takes into account the deployment environment including the competing solutions. The framework is accompanied by a research method toolbox that introduces practical tools for applying the framework. Finally, the application of the framework is demonstrated with Multipath TCP case study. The usage of the suggested framework can help protocol developers to identify the potential deployment challenges and opportunities of emerging protocols and thus increase the likelihood of adoption. Moreover, potential adopters can use the framework as a supporting tool for making adoption decisions.