On Socially-Inspired Cooperative and Efficient Overlay Network Evolution based on Group Selection Pattern

In overlay networks, interplay between network structure and dynamics remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we study dynamic co-evolution between individual strategies (cooperative or defect) and overlay network structures. Inspired by evolutionary game theory, we propose a general scheme to evolve a given overlay into the resulting topology, which has high global network efficiency and average clustering coefficient that indicate high small-world-ness. In our scheme, peers’ local interactions integrate network reciprocity and group selection algorithm, and lead to the emergence of cooperative and efficient overlay network structure. Specifically, we design a link-formation game to characterize the social dilemma of forming links in overlay network, which means that, in this game, defection always gives individual peers a higher payoff regardless of what opponent’s strategy is, but, the aggregation of payoffs by mutual cooperative peers is always better than all other cases. In its evolutionary link formation phase, we adopt simple economic process-each peer keeps one link to cooperative neighbor in its neighborhood. Our simulation results show that the proposed mechanism can drive a given overlay network into fully cooperative and efficient small-world structure.