A fair multimedia exchange protocol

Abstract

In this paper, we address the problem of fair exchange of multimedia files and propose a fair multimedia exchange protocol. The protocol is fair in such a way that none of the parties obtain a significant advantage and cheat on the other party by terminating the protocol abruptly. In the application scenario that we considered two parties want to exchange some multimedia files such that neither party wants to transmit its own data in its entirety before receiving other party's data. The proposed fair multimedia exchange protocol uses a baby-step approach in which data are sent in parts and the probability of protocol completion is gradually increased over several cycles. We also implemented the proposed protocol and comparatively analyzed its performance. We observed that, in terms of execution time, the proposed protocol performs close to a secure but unfair protocol for the same amount of exchange data. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.