Price of anarchy, locality gap, and a network service provider game

Abstract

In this paper, we define a network service provider game. We show that the price of anarchy of the defined game can be bounded by analyzing a local search heuristic for a related facility location problem called the k-facility location problem. As a result, we show that the k-facility location problem has a locality gap of 5. This result is of interest on its own. Our result gives evidence to the belief that the price of anarchy of certain games are related to analysis of local search heuristics. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.