Robust vote sampling in a P2P media distribution system

Abstract

The explosion of freely available media content through BitTorrent file sharing networks over the Internet means that users need guides or recommendations to find the right, high quality, content. Current systems rely on centralized servers to aggregate, rate and moderate metadata for this purpose. We present the design and simulations, using real BitTorrent traces, for a method combining fully decentralized metadata dissemination, vote sampling and ranking for deployment in the Tribler.org BitTorrent media client. Our design provides robustness to spam attacks, where metadata does not reflect the content it is attached to, by controlling metadata spreading and by vote sampling based on a collusion proof experience function. Our design is light-weight, fully decentralized and offers good performance and robustness under realistic conditions. © 2009 IEEE.