A Pragmatic and Scalable Solution for Free Riding Problem in Peer to Peer Networks

摘要

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems are increasingly popular as an alternative to the traditional client-server model for many applications, particularly file sharing. Free-riding is one of the most serious problems encountered in Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems like BitTorrent. Free riding is a serious problem in P2P networks for both Internet service providers (ISPs) and users. To users, the response time of query increases significantly because a few altruistic peers have to handle too many requests. In P2P file sharing systems, free-riders who use others' resources without sharing their own cause system-wide performance degradation. Therefore, the rational P2P application developers should develop some anti-free riding measures to deal with it. In this paper, we propose a pragmatic and scalable peer to peer scheme based on a utility function that uses two parameters: collaboration of peers and detection of tentative of free riders. Performance evaluation of the proposed solution shows that results are globally satisfactory.