Abstract
Overlay networks have been widely deployed upon the Internet to provide improved network services. However, the interaction between overlay and traffic engineering (TE) as well as among co-existing overlays may occur. In this paper, we adopt game theoretic approaches to analyze this hybrid interaction. Firstly, we model a situation of the hybrid interaction as an n+1-player non-cooperative game, where overlays and TE are of equal status, and prove the existence of Nash equilibrium (NE). Secondly, we model another situation of the hybrid interaction as a 1-leadern-follower Stackelberg-Nash game, where TE is the leader and coexisting overlays are followers, and prove that the cost at Stackelberg-Nash equilibrium (SNE) is at least as good as that at NE for TE. Thirdly, we propose a cooperative coalition mechanism based on Shapley value to overcome the inherent inefficiency of NE and SNE, where players can improve their performance and form stable coalitions.