Abstract
New technologies prompted an explosion in the development of communication networks. Modern network design techniques often leads to a construction of the most profitable or the least cost network that provides some service to customers. The class of Steiner trees often arises in those considerations. There are various costs and gains associated with building and using Steiner tree networks. Moreover, the involved multiple network users and/or owners possibly have conflicting objectives. However, they might cooperate in order to decrease their joint cost or increase their joint profit. Clearly, these individuals or organizations will support a globally ‘attractive’ solution(s) only if their expectations for a ‘fair share’ of the cost or profit are met. Consequently, providing network developers, users and owners with efficiently computable ‘fair’ cost (profit) allocation solution procedures is of great importance for strategic management. This work is an overview of some results (some previously published as well as some new) in the development of cooperative game theory based mechanisms to efficiently compute ‘attractive’ cost allocation solutions for a class of Steiner tree networks.