Staggercast: Demand-Side Management for ISPs

Abstract: The continuing expansion of Internet media consumption has increased traffic volumes, and hence congestion, on access links. In response, both mobile and wireline ISPs must either increase capacity or perform traffic engineering over existing resources. Unfortunately, provisioning timescales are long, the process is costly, and single-homing means operators cannot balance across the last mile. Inspired by energy and transport networks, we propose demand-side management of users to reduce the impact caused by consumption patterns out-pacing that of edge network provision. By directly affecting user behaviour through a range of incentives, our techniques enable resource management over shorter timescales than is possible in conventional networks. Using survey data from 100 participants we explore the feasibility of introducing the principles of demand-side management in today's networks.