TY - GEN
T1 - Dynamics of competition between incumbent and emerging network technologies
AU - Jin, Youngmi
AU - Sen, Soumya
AU - Guérin, Roch
AU - Hosanagar, Kartik
AU - Zhang, Zhi Li
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - The Internet is by all accounts an incredible success, but in spite or maybe because of this success, its deficiencies have come under increasing scrutiny and triggered calls for new architectures to succeed it. Those architectures will, however, face a formidable incumbent in the Internet, and their ability to ultimately replace it is likely to depend equally on technical superiority as on economic factors. The goal of this paper is to start developing models that can help provide a quantitative understanding of a competition between the Internet and a new system, and show what factors affect it most strongly. A model for the adoption of competing network technologies by individual users is formulated and solved. It accounts for both the intrinsic value of each technology and the positive externalities derived from their respective numbers of adopters. Using this model, different configurations are explored and possible outcomes characterized. More importantly, configurations are identified where small differences in the attributes of either technology can lead to vastly different results. The paper provides initial results that can help identify parameters that significantly affect the likelihood of success of new network technologies.
AB - The Internet is by all accounts an incredible success, but in spite or maybe because of this success, its deficiencies have come under increasing scrutiny and triggered calls for new architectures to succeed it. Those architectures will, however, face a formidable incumbent in the Internet, and their ability to ultimately replace it is likely to depend equally on technical superiority as on economic factors. The goal of this paper is to start developing models that can help provide a quantitative understanding of a competition between the Internet and a new system, and show what factors affect it most strongly. A model for the adoption of competing network technologies by individual users is formulated and solved. It accounts for both the intrinsic value of each technology and the positive externalities derived from their respective numbers of adopters. Using this model, different configurations are explored and possible outcomes characterized. More importantly, configurations are identified where small differences in the attributes of either technology can lead to vastly different results. The paper provides initial results that can help identify parameters that significantly affect the likelihood of success of new network technologies.
KW - Network externality
KW - Technology adoption
KW - Technology diffusion
KW - User heterogeneity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=65249168055&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=65249168055&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/1403027.1403039
DO - 10.1145/1403027.1403039
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:65249168055
SN - 9781605581798
T3 - SIGCOMM 2008 Conference and the Co-located Workshops - Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Economics of Networked Systems, NetEcon'08
SP - 49
EP - 54
BT - SIGCOMM 2008 Conference and the Co-located Workshops - Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Economics of Networked Systems, NetEcon'08
T2 - SIGCOMM 2008 Conference and the co-located Workshops - 3rd International Workshop on Economics of Networked Systems, NetEcon'08
Y2 - 17 August 2008 through 22 August 2008
ER -