Second-Chance Auctions for Multimedia Session Pricing

Auction mechanisms have recently gained increasing attention as an alternative approach for pricing Internet resources. For the case of divisible commodities over single links, Generalized Vickrey Auctions (GVA) are already a well-established standard mechanism, whereas an abundance of unsolved problems is related to the generalization of GVAs in space and time, i.e. for the case of connections over multiple links and for session holding times that require to win a series of consecutive periodic auctions. This paper focuses on the latter multi-period aspect which is typical for any type of multimedia applications like QoS-enabled conferencing or videostreaming. First, a Markovian property for efficient bidding is derived, and various user strategies are simulated and evaluated, before a suitable auction protocol is described. Eventually, the novel concept of a “Second-chance Auction Mechanism” (SAM) leads to an increase in economic efficiency without imposing significant additional overhead.