[Brown CS Talks] Brown CS Lecture: Professor Christos Papadimitriou in Lubrano on December 4, 2002 at 4pm

[talks@list.cs.brown.edu]

		  The Department of Computer Science
			   BROWN UNIVERSITY

	   SECOND ANNUAL PARIS KANELLAKIS MEMORIAL LECTURE
			      
			       presents

		   Professor Christos Papadimitriou
		   
		  University of California, Berkeley

			
		  Wednesday, December 4, 2002 at 4 pm

	       Lubrano Conference Room (CIT 4th floor)

		Refreshments will be served at 3:45 pm

		A reception will follow in the atrium
	       

		 Algorithmic Aspects of the Internet
 
			       Abstract

The Internet is the first computational artifact that was not designed
by a single entity, but emerged from the complex interaction of
many. Hence, it must be approached as a mysterious object, akin to the
universe and the cell, to be understood by observation and falsifiable
theories. Game theory plays an important role in this endeavor, since
the entities involved in the Internet are in various and varying
degrees of collaboration and competition.

We survey work in progress considering the Internet and its protocols
as equilibria in appropriate games, and striving to explain phenomena
such as the power law distributions of the degrees of the Internet
topology in terms of the complex optimization problems faced by each
node.


		     Host: Professor Tom Doeppner