A mathematical model for the TCP Tragedy of the Commons

This paper presents a novel mathematical model for the TCP Tragedy of the Commons, using Game Theory concepts. This tragedy may appear in a TCP/IP-based network when hosts do not respect the protocol rules and try to monopolize the shared network resources by using a selfish strategy. Our model quantifies the effects of this evil behavior in a simple and standard network topology and allows to obtain some interesting results which we prove formally. Finally, we validate the model results by comparing its predictions with a set of extensive simulations carried out using the NS Network Simulator.