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The notion of fairness with respect to resource sharing among the competing flows is one of the important considerations in network design. This is true in particular for IP networks (which are the foundation of the Internet), where the service model is based on best effort and any possible distortion of it may lead to flow starvation and eventually system imbalances. In fact, fairness should be one of the major objectives both on a network layer and transport layer. This is evident in the case of elastic flows such as TCP, where fairness may have a major impact on congestion resolution. On a network layer, fairness mechanisms combined with scheduling and queuing policies lead to equitable service, which may also induce higher router utilization and hence better network performance. The paper investigates the current trends in understanding and applying the fairness concept on the Internet and hence in heterogeneous networks. Then it studies and examines the extension of the fairness concept in the context of development and developing regions, where both the traditional lack of infrastructure and costly communication services have also affected the penetration of the Internet and more even distribution of its benefits. The key question is whether or not it is plausible to identify a framework for the evaluation of efficiently-fairness tradeoffs that may provide a sound basis for a model of a more equitable access to the Internet to a diversity of users with different needs and financial possibilities representing mainly developing regions and emerging economies.

Keywords: Fairness, efficiency, Internet, resource sharing, hetrogenous networks