An Amortized Tit-For-Tat Protocol for Exchanging Bandwidth instead of Content in P2P Networks

Incentives for resource sharing are crucial for the proper operation of P2P networks. The principle of the incentive mechanisms in current content sharing P2P networks such as BitTorrent is to have peers exchange content of mutual interest. As a consequence, a peer can actively participate in the system only if it shares content that is of immediate interest to other peers. In this paper we propose to lift this restriction by using bandwidth rather than content as the resource upon which incentives are based. Bandwidth, in contrast to content, is independent of peer interests and so can be exchanged between any two peers. We present the design of a protocol called amortized titfor-tat (ATFT) based on the bandwidth-exchange concept. This protocol defines mechanisms for bandwidth exchange corresponding to those in BitTorrent for content exchange, in particular for finding bandwidth borrowers that amortize the bandwidth borrowed in the past with their currently idle bandwidth. In addit...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: SASO
• Authors: Pawel Garbacki, Dick H. J. Epema, Maarten van Steen
• Keywords: Incentive, P2P Networks, Peers Exchange Content, SASO 2007, Self-Organizing Systems