Brief announcement: an incentive-compatible capacity assignment algorithm for bulk data distribution using P2P

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the rapid growth of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks has provided a new paradigm for content distribution. To improve the efficiency of a P2P system, it is important to provide incentives for the peers to participate and contribute their resources. In this work, we address the incentive provisioning problem for distribution of large-volume content in P2P networks, and present a "seeing-is-believing" incentive-compatible mechanism in which a peer will decide how much resources will be assigned to which neighbors based on what it has experienced. The protocol applies a utility-based resource-trading concept where peers will maximize their contributions for a fair or better return, and we show that by adopting this protocol, the system will achieve Cournot Equlibrium. Our protocol is light-weight, completely decentralized, and cheat-proof.

REFERENCES

• 1: Cohen, B., Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent. In Proc. of the First Workshop on Economics of Peer-to-Peer Systems, Berkeley, CA, June 2003.
• 2: Kostas G. Anagnostakis , Michael B. Greenwald, Exchange-Based Incentive Mechanisms for Peer-to-Peer File Sharing, Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'04), p.524-533, March 24-26, 2004
• 3: Simon G. M. Koo , Catherine Rosenberg , Dongyan Xu, Analysis of Parallel Downloading for Large File Distribution, Proceedings of the The Ninth IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems (FTDCS'03), p.128, May 28-30, 2003
• 4: Luenberger, D. G., Microeconomic Theory. McGraw-Hill, 1997.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Distributed networks

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Economics, Human Factors, Performance

Keywords:
P2P networks, distributed protocol, incentive mechanism