International Journal of Computer Engineering & Technology (IJCET)

Volume 8, Issue 1, January- February 2017, pp. 5159, Article ID: IJCET_08_01_007
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ISSN Print: 0976-6367 and ISSN Online: 09766375
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EXTENDING BAYESIAN LEARNING BASED

NEGOTIATION TECHNIQUE TO A TWO-ISSUE
BILATERAL NEGOTIATION IN CLOUD
B. Sunil Kamath
Research Scholar, Department of CSE (SJEC),
VTU, Belagavi, Karnataka, India

Dr. Rio DSouza

Professor & HOD, Department of CSE (SJEC),
VTU, Belagavi, Karnataka, India

ABSTRACT
In cloud computing environment, the price and reliability are two important QoS parameters
which need to be considered while negotiating agreements for cloud services. In a bilateral
negotiation scenario, generally the negotiating agents (be it buyer or seller) will keep the important
parameters like price, reliability and deadline secret. There are techniques wherein the Bayesian
Learning based Negotiating Agents (BLNAs) are able to estimate the opponent reserve price and
deadline so as to gain advantage in negotiation to achieve higher utility of final accepted offers. To
enhance this scheme of negotiation, a new Bayesian learning based negotiation agent is proposed
which considers both reserve price(RP) and reserved reliability(RR) as the secret, it tries to
estimate the opponents reserve price (RP) and Reserve reliability(RR) with deadline kept constant
for both the parties. To evaluate BLNAs performance, seller agent is set as BL based learning
agent and buyer agent is assumed to be incomplete information agent. The BLNA is found to be
better with overall utility in 44% cases compared to other possible negotiation strategies like
tradeoff, fuzzy concession and simple concession.
Key words: Cloud Computing, Service Negotiation, Bayesian learning.
Cite this Article: B. Sunil Kamath and Dr. Rio DSouza, Extending Bayesian Learning Based
Negotiation Technique to a Two-Issue Bilateral Negotiation in Cloud. International Journal of
Computer Engineering & Technology, 8(1), 2017, pp. 5159.
http://www.iaeme.com/IJCET/issues.asp?JType=IJCET&VType=8&IType=1

1. INTRODUCTION
There are 3 service models in cloud. They are Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-service
(PaaS) and Software-as-a-service (SaaS). The cloud computing is all about procuring Network, Storage,
Compute facility from Infrastructure providers and pay them on a pay-per-use basis. Now there are some
functional requirements (the various functionalities of the service) and non-functional requirements
(reliability or response time of the service) attached to the price paid for the service received from the

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 B. Sunil Kamath and Dr. Rio DSouza

cloud. For example, Storage access contracted from Amazon S3 is a functional requirement whereas the
price and reliability of the service are its non-functional requirement.
Cloud services are provided by cloud providers and are delivered over the internet to users. Cloud
service providers/consumers will have to monitor the QOS parameters of cloud service continuously so
that a guaranteed service level can be provided/consumed. Also the QOS level needs to be negotiated well
in advance parallel to fixing the price of the service. This process may be automated. Any irregularities
(like reliability falling below 90%) can then be reported by the opposite party and claim service credits for
the lack of quality of the service.
In this paper we focus on automated QOS-negotiation. There are many Negotiation strategies available
for use in QOS-negotiation like tradeoff and concession where we assume incomplete information of
opponent reserve price [1]. Also we suggest that there are few others like fuzzy logic based concession
strategy (FLC) and Bayesian updation based negotiation strategy for learning the opponent reserve price in
case of incomplete information [2]. The concession strategy starts from initial preferred value and goes on
making concession in each negotiation round effectively reducing the total utility of the proposal. Whereas
the tradeoff strategy demands extra on its more important issue and yields on its less important attribute,
keeping the total utility same and generating a proposal more attractive to the opponent. Clearly tradeoff
should excel all other strategy. In this paper we elaborate on Bayesian Learning based concession strategy
and show that its better than simple concession strategy [1] and excels pure tradeoff.
The remainder of the paper is divided into 6 sections. Section 2 details on the related work. Section
3introduces the actual problem scenario. Section 4 proposes our Bayesian learning based concession
strategy and Section 5 discusses implementation issues of Bayesian strategy and Section 6 gives the
conclusion and future work.

2. RELATED WORK
Literature that relates to this Research work can be discussed in two categories: (i) importance of QoS
negotiation in cloud context [8]-[10] and (ii) use of Bayesian learning in automated negotiation of QoS [2]-
[7]. In Ferretti et al. [8] suggests using QoS monitoring service before allocating requested resource in
cloud context. Freitas et al. [9] stresses on the importance of QoS assurance mechanisms to ensure QoS
mentioned in SLA Templates are adhered to in the cloud context. Dastjerdi et al. [10] suggests offer
generation should be based on resource utilization and conceding more on prices of less utilized resources.
Pan et al. [7][1] suggest bilateral negotiation protocol for negotiating price and QoS issues (like reliability).
Negotiation begins with best offer (max profit) and making concession or tradeoff in subsequent rounds.
In Zeng et al. [4] it is mentioned that Bayesian learning and updation mechanism is used for estimating
reserve price of opponent. Bayesian learning makes use of set of hypothesis (Hi), a priori knowledge of
probability of occurrence of Hi, conditional probability of e given Hi where e is encoded domain
knowledge of opponent offers, to arrive at final estimate of reserve price opponent. The work in [5]
suggests use of Bayesian classifier for reaching an agreement in multi-lateral negotiation scenario based on
past experiences. In [3][6] the Bayesian Learning procedure is used to estimate opponent Reserve price and
deadline and Genetic Algorithm is used to generate proposals in and around the Reserve Price and deadline
generated by BL procedure.

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 Extending Bayesian Learning Based Negotiation Technique to a Two-Issue Bilateral Negotiation in Cloud

3. THE ACTUAL PROBLEM SCENARIO

Table 1 A sample Starting Scenario

Min Max Service Provider(seller) Service Consumer(buyer)

Reserved Preferred Wght Reserved Prefer. Wgh
value value value value t
Rel. 0% 100% 85% 70% 0.1 75% 90% 0.9
Pri. 0 0.1 0.05 0.08 0.9 0.07 0.04 0.1
The Table 1 above depicts the conflicts between service consumer and service provider in terms of two
issues reliability and price. The problem scenario is assumed for Amazon S3 deployment.
The reliability can range from 0 to 100% (percentage per month) and price from 0 to 0.1(dollars/GB of
data per month). Now consider reliability of service provider which is 70% initially even though provider
can provide 85%. Service consumer has a reliability requirement of minimum 75% although it starts
negotiation initially at 90%. Clearly there is a preference gap over reliability (70% vs 90%). Similarly
consider price issue. Service provider seeks to maximize his profit so initially expects 0.08 (can come
down to 0.05). Whereas service consumer is willing to pay only 0.04 initially (can come up to 0.07). Here
too there is a conflict over price (0.08 vs 0.04).
Assumption (Incomplete information): There are a few assumptions necessary before we negotiate i.e.
service consumer and service provider keep their values of preferred and reserved value of reliability and
price secret. Service consumer knows that service provider cares for storage price more than reliability.
Service provider knows that service consumer cares more about reliability than price.

4. BAYESIAN LEARNING BASED NEGOTIATION SOLUTION

4.1. Time Based Negotiation Model
There are many types of negotiation models like resource dependent, time dependent etc. with which we
can achieve bilateral negotiation between two agents (S-seller & B-Buyer). The agents will be negotiating
over a set of issues like price, quality of service etc. and will be having conflicting roles. In this work, we
concentrate on reliability as an issue as the price issue has been already dealt in [2]. Reliability is higher-is-
better attribute for buyer and lower-is-better attribute for seller. The agents negotiate by exchanging
proposals using Rubinsteins alternating offers protocol as follows.

= + (1) | | (1)
where =0 for Seller and =1 for Buyer. IRx and RRx is the initial (most preferred) reliability and
reserve (least preferred) reliability of x. x is the deadline and x, 0 x, is the time dependent strategy
of x. The concession behavior of x is determined by x and is fixed as follows
1) Conciliatory (0 x<1) i.e. x makes large concession at the start of negotiation rounds than at later
rounds.
2) Linear (x=1) i.e. x concedes at a constant rate throughout the negotiation.
3) Conservative (1<x) x makes small concession at the start of negotiation rounds than at later rounds.

4.2. Utility Function

The utility function applied to calculate the utility of a proposal is as follows
| |
( )= + (1 ) (2)
| |

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 B. Sunil Kamath and Dr. Rio DSouza

whereumin is the minimum utility that x gets for an agreement at RRx . For experimental purpose, the
value of umin is set to 0.1. At Rtx = RRx, = 0.1 > = 0 where D is the event of failing to
reach an agreement.
The negotiation may have two results i.e. either an agreement or a conflict. In case of an agreement, an
offer or a counter offer is accepted. In case of a conflict deadline has been reached without an offer being
accepted.
An agreement is reached when one agent proposes a deal that matches or exceeds what another agent
asks for, i.e.,
" #$ %& #

4.3. Optimal Strategy with Complete Information

Let optimal strategy of agent x is defined as the strategy that maximizes the utility of x at agreement time
Tc. Let Rc be the agreement reliability (Rc = RTcx). The maximum strategy ensures

(
for all t Tc.
For negotiation with complete information the following 2 theorems hold
Theorem 1(B<S): S achieves maximal utility when it adopts the strategy
IR
)* = +%,-./-0
* *
Theorem 2(S<B): B achieves maximal utility when it adopts the strategy

) = +%,-0/-.
RR

4.4. Optimal Negotiation Strategy with Incomplete Information

For negotiation with incomplete information, if an agent can estimate opponent reserved reliability (RR)
and deadline () exactly, the agent can estimate the optimal strategy by Th. 1 and Th. 2. The relationship
between RR and is given as follows. Formulas for calculating RR in (3) and deadline in (4) are derived
from (1).
34
= 5 8 + (3)
67

9 = :.
8
(4)
If it is assumed that IRx is known, x can be calculated using IRx and 2 proposals with different time
rounds as
=
R: IR=
) = +%, =
<; R:1 IR=
where t3. (5)

In essence, if IRx is known exactly, x can be calculated by (5) when t 3. Then if either RR or is
estimated the other can be computed using (3) or (4). In this current work, the RR is estimated by using
Bayesian updation formula and then deadline calculation is done using equation (4).

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 Extending Bayesian Learning Based Negotiation Technique to a Two-Issue Bilateral Negotiation in Cloud

4.5. Bayesian Learning based Proposed Approach

Bayesian Learning of Opponent Reserve Reliability (RR):
Let the Reliability range be in [MINR, MAXR]. An agent adopting BL forms a set of hypotheses {Hi}
of opponents RR, where Hi= i * (MAXR-MINR)/NH and NH is the number of hypotheses. The i-th
hypothesis of an opponents RR is defined as RRiopp. The following relation between Rtx and RRx is
derived from (3).

= (6)
>

Where Rdx(t) is the discounting ratio of x and measuredbyRdx(t) =( t/x ) x .

EFF
D <GDEFF EFF
C C
@AA @AA D>
?" B $=1 D
EFF
<GDEFF
(7)
D>

Where opp is calculated by (5) when t3. Due to same dimensionality and difficulty of estimating
opponent deadline as opponent Reserve Reliability, opp(t-1) is the estimated deadline at t-1 and is
calculated from (4) using Reserve reliability at previous time round t-1 RRopp(t-1).
Special Cases ?" @AA B
@AA
= 0 are handled as follows:For Seller estimating opponent RR using
@AA @AA @AA
Bayesian Learning (BL), if < then ?" B @AA = 0 because Buyer will not generate
proposals lower than its Reserve Reliability. Similarly for Buyer estimating opponent Reserve Reliability
using BL, if @AA >
@AA
then ?" @AA B
@AA
= 0 because Seller will not generate proposals higher
than its Reserve reliability.
When x receives Rtopp the Bayesian updation formula revives its belief of opponent RR with prior
probability distribution is defined as follows
EFF EFF EFF
@AA @AA I <; " $. I" B J
?" B $ = LM I J
EFF EFF (8)
<; " $I
EFF
JN; J
| J )
@AA @AA @AA @AA
Where the prior probability? # ( )is defined as? # " $ = ?" B #$
Initially its assumed uniform distribution over all hypothesis.
Finally expected value of RRopp at time round t @AA (:) is
@AA (:) @AA @AA @AA
= ?" B ) (9)

4.6. BL- Based Negotiation Agents

BLNA x generates the next proposal using the following formula:
#
= # + (1) ( ( #)
) | #| (10)
where =0 for seller and =1 for buyer.
BL- procedure for negotiating reliability
Set x as BLNA
// Generating proposal using BL information
If time round t<3
Compute @AA (:) as an average value in feasible reliability range.
@AA
Compute opp using (4) and (:)
Compute x using theorem 1 or 2 with @AA (:)&opp
Generate a proposal using (10) with x

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 B. Sunil Kamath and Dr. Rio DSouza

If time round t=2

@AA
Set ? # " $as RRopp(t=2) for all i
If time round t3
Compute opp(t-1) using @AA
:1
Compute opp using (5)
Compute O :
@AA
Compute ?
@AA
| ) using (7) for all i
@AA @AA
Compute ?" B $ using (8) for all i
@AA @AA @AA
Set? # " $ = ?" B # $.
opp
Compute RR (t) using (9)
Compute opp using (4) and RRopp(t)
Compute x using theorem 1 or 2 with RRopp (t) &opp
Generate proposal using (10) with x

5. IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS OF BAYESIAN NEGOTIATION

STRATEGY
5.1. Implementation and Results of Bayesian Strategy
The Implementation of both Buyer and Seller agents have been performed on Intel i5 processor with 2.40
GHZ speed and 64-bit Operating system (windows 10) with 8GB internal RAM. The Bayesian Framework
can be made useful in negotiation context as follows. Since we have considered two issues in negotiation
(Reliability and Price). Let us now restrict it to issue Price. We consider the negotiation in the Buyer
viewpoint. The Buyer clearly knows his own reserve price RPbuyer and is trying to estimate the Seller
reserve price RPseller which is unknown to him.

Table 2 The final offers accepted by Buyer or Seller employing Bayesian negotiation strategy for each of
starting scenario S1-S20 taken from [1].

Starting Reliability Price Total utility

scenario Useller Ubuyer
S1 .845 .071 1.444
0.654 0.789
S2 .795 .061 1.324
0.569 0.754
S3 .804 .047 1.224
0.448 0.776
S4 .981 .035 1.269
0.320 0.948
S5 Negotiation Failure
S6 .845 .031 1.123
0.294 0.829
S7 .795 .041 1.164
0.389 0.774
S8 .804 .047 1.224
0.448 0.776
S9 .981 .055 1.429
0.501 0.928

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 Extending Bayesian Learning Based Negotiation Technique to a Two-Issue Bilateral Negotiation in Cloud

S10 Negotiation Failure

S11 .87 .076 1.504
0.697 0.807
S12 .82 .066 1.384
0.612 0.772
S13 .807 .053 1.275
0.502 0.773
S14 .923 .42 1.282
0.394 0.887
S15 Negotiation failure
S16 .900 .033 1.186
0.309 0.876
S17 .851 .042 1.224
0.401 0.822
S18 .807 .053 1.275
0.502 0.773
S19 Negotiation failure
S20 .61 .089 1.402
0.842 0.559

But the Buyer is able to update his belief about opponent Reserve price based on his interaction with
Seller and his domain knowledge. The interaction between buyer and seller agents allows the buyer agent
to assess the sellers offer price and the domain knowledge which the agent has acquired over the days may
be something like seller is likely to ask for a price 17% higher than his reserve price. As a result of this
updation, the Buyer agent is able to get a better expectation of the Sellers Payoff structure and is in a
better position to make more advantageous offers. This analogy can be further extended to Reliability issue
with few modifications like if Buyer Reserve price is RPbuyer then buyer agent will not accept an offer
higher than RPbuyer as the price is a lower-is-better attribute for him. Whereas Reliability is a higher-is-
better attribute for buyer agent so the buyer is not willing to accept anything less than reserve reliability
RRbuyer. The same holds true for the seller agent. This work mainly focuses on attaining agreement on
Reliability issue. The algorithm for Price may be done similarly [2].
The Table 2 here depicts the final offers (Reliability, Price) accepted by either buyer or seller based on
their reserve price set up initially (based on the starting scenario as discussed in Section 3). The starting
scenarios are taken from [1].
It is observed that in starting scenarios S5, S10, S15 and S19 the Bayesian strategy is not the right
strategy to apply as there is negotiation failure happening in these starting scenarios. Therefore, we need to
rely on other strategies to fill up this gap.

5.2. Comparison with other Strategies

We compared four strategies namely Simple concession Tradeoff, Fuzzy based and Bayesian based
negotiation strategies for various starting scenarios from [1] which have been staggered to give 625 sample
starting scenarios which we consider to be comprehensive enough to reveal strategy working. There are
two game theory strategies with which we have compared Bayesian updation and learning strategy.
They are Simple Concession and Tradeoff. The Simple concession strategy goes on making concession in
each of the negotiation rounds thereby reducing the overall utility. Therefore, we have observed that when
presented with 625 starting scenarios, none of the cases this strategy gives a better total utility. Whereas
tradeoff is a strategy in which the successful offered yields on his less important attribute to give opponent
a better chance of accepting an offer. It gives a better overall social benefit (i.e. total utility) in 0.64% of
the cases. But the problem with Tradeoff is its success rate (as it fails in some scenarios). There is also
another fuzzy logic based concession strategy in which the Seller and Buyer acceptance are based on the

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 B. Sunil Kamath and Dr. Rio DSouza

Fuzzy rules which are set by the Negotiation agents initially. We have practically observed that
t in 55.04%
of the cases, this strategy has given better total utility. The Bayesian updation based learning of opponent
reserved values has given better utilities in 44.32 % of the cases and stands second in this list of
negotiation strategies.

Figure 1 Comparison of Negotiation strategies.

6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

FUTUR ENHANCEMENT
As more and more services move to cloud for computation, network and storage it becomes extremely
important to assess the QoS parameters offered by the cloud service provider and to bargain the right price
for the services offered depending on the percentage of QoS. Our current work is an effort in this direction
to fully automate the QoS negotiation between service consumer and service provider without any bias
towards either of the parties i.e. either service provider or service consumer. We have analyzed and
implemented the algorithms for supporting bilateral automated negotiation of two QoS parameters (namely
reliability and price) and have extended the basic Bayesian updation algorithm which was a single issue
negotiation. We have then compared the strategy with other strategies from game theory and fuzzy logic
domains and have shown that Bayesian Learning stands in second position compared with other strategies
in terms of overall
rall social benefit. As a future work we try to dynamically select the right strategy from the
lot based on past history (of negotiation) and apply that strategy for the current scenario. We plan to
implement this selection using Back-propagation
Back Neural Network framework.

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