EE758: Internet Economics

Course offered in:

Spring 2017

Instructors:

Prof. D. Manjunath and Prof. Jayakrishnan Nair

Course Content:

Motivation:

Arguably the most unique and non-elec course taught in our department. With a lot of students taking interest in finance jobs and with BS in Economics starting from 2017, this course could act as a introduction of what you can expect in such courses. Let me warn you that this course is very different from the introductory HS101. More mathematical, more advanced and more uptodate in content that HS101. Topics can easily be related to real life situations.

The official curriculum was closely followed. Following list nearly covers all the topics that were taught:

Basic networking technologies, regulatory issues, and the economic ecosystem of communication service providers. Basic microeconomic principles and regulatory structures. Pricing of communication services and usage models in the different competition models. Interconnection between networks, network formation games Paid peering and peering games. Economics of network neutrality, sponsored content, zero-rating services and its social and regulatory issues. Simultaneous ascending price auctions for spectrum sale: mechanism design, bidder strategies and case studies.

Prerequisites:

None

Feedback on Lectures:

You would need to pay attention to what he is explaining on the board very sincerely atleast for some topics like auctions, since the content taught is not closely followed in textbooks. Also, some topics in this course are very tricky to understand, even prof sometimes failed to convince the entire class after several attempts with no fault of his own. Reading previous lecture notes briefly before the lecture is a good practice to follow.

Also it is good for you if you do not sleep in his lectures and well ask a doubt here and there. It serves well for you, if you are in good terms with the professor.

Attendance Policy:

Prof. enforces a strict attendance policy. Takes manual attendance whenever he feels like. DX or even FR may be awarded should he deem it appropriate.

Feedback on assignments, quizzes and exams:

No quizzes happened when we were taught. We had an endsem which was very easy, previous batch didn’t even have an endsem. There were 4 assignments which were easy and related to the examples taught in the class.

Course Structure and Requirements:

Should you be attentive in class and contribute in discussions, not much of an outside effort will be required to secure a good grade. The assignments are based on concepts introduced in class and the ensuing discussions.

Some research papers were also discussed by Prof. Jayakrishnan Nair covering many topics like paid peering.

After conclusion of instruction, the class is divided into groups of 2-3 each, with each group getting a journal paper or 2 for review and critical assessment, to be evaluated in an hour long presentation by each group. This occupies a lot of weight of the total evaluation.

Grading Statistics:

Following was the grade distribution for our batch:

AA 16

AB 10

BB 5

BC 2

Total 33 Grades

Study Material and References:

Take notes in the lecture and it should be enough for you, but still stating the list of reference books that could help gain further insights.

These books contain few of the topics covered:

C. Courcoubetis and R. Weber, Pricing Communication Networks, Wiley 2003. H. Varian, Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach, W. W. Norton and Company, 1999. P. Varaiya and J. Walrand, High Performance Communication Networks, Morgan Kaufman Publishers, 2000. N. Nisan, T. Roughgarden, E. Tardos and V. Vazirani, Algorithmic Game Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Research papers.