Distributed Algorithmic Mechanism Design (DAMD) combines theoretical computer science’s traditional focus on computational tractability with its more recent interest in incentive compatibility and distributed computing. The Internet’s decentralized nature, in which distributed computation and autonomous agents prevail, makes DAMD a very natural approach for many Internet problems. This paper first outlines the basics of DAMD and then reviews previous DAMD results on multicast cost sharing and interdomain routing. The remainder of the paper describes several promising research directions and poses some specific open problems.

The Distributed Computing Column covers the theory of systems that are composed of a number of interacting computing elements. These include problems of communication and networking, databases, distributed shared memory, multiprocessor architectures, operating systems, veri cation, internet, and the web.