Incentives, overlays, and economic traffic control

Economic perspectives in network management have recently attracted a high level of attention. The Third Workshop on Economic Traffic Management (ETM 2010) was the continuation of two successful events that were held at the University of Zürich, Switzerland in 2008 and 2009. The main objective of ETM 2010 was to offer sci- tists, researchers, and operators the opportunity to present innovative research on ETM mechanisms, to discuss new related ideas and directions, and to strengthen the cooperation in the field of economics–technology interplay. Being co-located with the International Teletraffic Congress (ITC22), ETM 2010 brought together a new and fast-growing scientific community. The concept of ETM has emerged due to the fact that a multitude of different se- interested players are simultaneously active in the Internet. While such players may either compete or complement each other in the value chain for service providers, each of them has his own incentives and interests. To enable a win–win situation for all players involved (basically end users, Internet Service Providers (ISP), telec- munication operators, and service providers), new incentive-based approaches have been recently developed, tested, and even commercially deployed, which fall under the domain termed Economic Traffic Management (ETM). ETM mechanisms aim at improving efficiency within the network, e. g. , by reducing costs, while also impr- ing Quality-of-Experience (QoE) for end users or applications.