Estimating User Utility Functions for Network-Resource Pricing
Sunju Park · 2006
Priority-based network service has been widely adopted for the Internet traffic management in the context of IETF differentiated services, and computing optimal prices for such priority-based service is the key topic in many pricing literature. While the equilibrium analysis has been commonly used to this end, many have criticized the validity of the underlying assumption of equilibrium analysis that user utility functions are precisely known. In this paper, we propose a solution for bridging the gap between the existing theoretical work on optimal pricing and the unavailability of precise user utility information in real networks. In the proposed method, the service provider obtains more and more accurate estimates of user utility functions from the initial imprecise knowledge by iteratively changing the price of service levels and observing the users' decisions under the changed price. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we have developed a general principle for estimating the user utility functions. Second, we have developed a novel method for setting the prices that can optimize the extraction of the knowledge about user utility functions. The extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.