P2P incentive mechanism for file sharing and cooperation

Abstract

P2P (Peer-to-Peer) network allows peers to distribute and obtain a file to be shared cooperatively. However, some peers only download files without cooperation. Peers also share low quality files or unpopular files. These selfish behavior of peers is referred to "free riding". The free riding of peer may decrease the participation of other peers or the system performance. In this paper, we propose an incentive mechanism, called P2PIncentive, which provides the correct use of incentive mechanism by using trust peers, computes contribution values referring behavior of peers and rewards peers. The proposed mechanism assigns bandwidth and TTL (Time-To-Live) to a peer according to the contribution and differentiates the use of service. A case study on simulations shows the service differentiation according to the behavior of peers, the correct use of incentive mechanism and the advantages by use of trust peers. To prove the stability of proposed mechanism, we also show the disadvantage that a peer receives from the incorrect use of incentive mechanism. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.