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arXiv · 2502.04811

On the Price of Anarchy in Packet Routing Games with FIFO

Daniel Schmand·Torben Schürenberg·Martin Strehler
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Abstract

We investigate packet routing games in which network users selfishly route themselves through a network over discrete time, aiming to reach the destination as quickly as possible. Conflicts due to limited capacities are resolved by the first-in, first-out (FIFO) principle. Building upon the line of research on packet routing games initiated by Werth et al., we derive the first non-trivial bounds for packet routing games with FIFO. Specifically, we show that the price of anarchy is at most 2 for the important and well-motivated class of uniformly fastest route equilibria introduced by Scarsini et al. on any linear multigraph. We complement our results with a series of instances on linear multigraphs, where the price of stability converges to at least $\frac{e}{e-1}$. Furthermore, our instances provide a lower bound for the price of anarchy of continuous Nash flows over time on linear multigraphs which establishes the first lower bound of $\frac{e}{e-1}$ on a graph class where the monotonicity conjecture is proven by Correa et al.

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Daniel Schmand, Torben Schürenberg, Martin Strehler. 2025-02-07. On the Price of Anarchy in Packet Routing Games with FIFO. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.04811

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