Understanding Peer Behavior and Designing Incentive Mechanism in Peer-to-Peer Networks: An Analytical Model Based on Game Theory

摘要

In this paper, we present a game-based model to analyze nodes' behaviors and influence of incentive mechanism on nodes in a peer-to-peer network in which the altruistic and selfish peers coexist. In this model, a mental cost is attached to a peer to describe the level of the peer's altruism and determine the type of the peer. The merit of our model is the relation between the equilibrium and incentive mechanism(i.e. the influence of incentive mechanism on equilibrium) can be denoted by an analytic formula directly. Therefore, we can evaluate and compare the efficiency of diversified incentive mechanisms conveniently, the network operators can choose proper incentive mechanism to achieve certain optimal objective.