Self-organization of common good usage and an application to Internet services

Natural and human-made common goods present key challenges due to their susceptibility to degradation, overuse, and congestion. We explore the self-organization of their usage when individuals have access to several available commons but limited information on them. We propose an extension of the Win-Stay, Lose-Shift (WSLS) strategy for such systems, in which individuals use a resource repeatedly until they are unsuccessful and then shift randomly. This simple and completely decentralized strategy promotes balanced resource use based solely on individual experience, as it does not require communication between individuals nor a governing institution to coordinate usage. Selective individuals who retain information on their usage and accordingly adapt their tolerance to failure in each common good improve the experienced quality for all individuals in the population. Even in hybrid populations of adaptive and nonadaptive individuals, the WSLS strategy allows self-organization into an ideal distribution with equal experienced quality across common goods. We apply this strategy to the server selection problem faced by mobile users when accessing Internet services. Realistic simulations demonstrate its success, scalability, and robustness to dynamic system conditions. Furthermore, the WSLS strategy can be used to understand animal dispersal on grazing and foraging land, to propose solutions to operators of systems of public transport and other technological commons, and to address problems of common good usage in social systems through decentralized governance rather than control-oriented policies.