Incentives engineering for structured P2P systems - a feasibility demonstration using economic experiments

Structured peer-to-peer systems allow to administer large volumes of data. Several peers collaborate to generate a query result. Analyses of unstructured peer-to-peer systems, namely of those for file-sharing, show that peers tend to shirk collaboration. We anticipate similar behavior in structured peer-to-peer systems. Recently, protocols to counter uncooperative behavior in such systems have been proposed. This article examines the behavior of peers under such protocols, using game theory. A first result of this paper is a set of hypotheses, e.g.: Peers answer queries if more than a certain percentage of their queries is answered. In many situations, free-riding does not lead to a break-down of the system. Trust, reciprocity and reputation building via a feedback mechanism are behavioral motives that increase cooperation. As a second step, we have conducted economic experiments with human participants to validate our predictions. Such experiments are important because we do not need...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: SIGECOM
• Authors: Stephan Schosser, Klemens Böhm, Rainer Schmidt, Bodo Vogt
• Keywords: Peer-to-peer Systems, Several Peers, SIGECOM 2006, Structured Peer-to-peer Systems