English

Efficiency through disinformation

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

We study the impact of disinformation on a model of resource allocation with independent selfish agents: clients send requests to one of two servers, depending on which one is perceived as offering shorter waiting times. Delays in the information about the servers' state leads to oscillations in load. Servers can give false information about their state (global disinformation) or refuse service to individual clients (local disinformation). We discuss the tradeoff between positive effects of disinformation (attenuation of oscillations) and negative effects (increased fluctuations and reduced adaptability) for different parameter values.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0312266,
  title  = {Efficiency through disinformation},
  author = {Richard Metzler and Mark Klein and Yaneer Bar-Yam},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0312266},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures