Incentive Mechanisms for Peer-to-Peer Systems

Abstract. Most of the existing research in peer-to-peer systems focuses on protocol design and doesn’t consider the rationality of each peer. One phenomenon that should not be ignored is free riding. Some peers simply consume system resources but contribute nothing to the system. In this paper we present an agentbased peer-to-peer system, in which each peer is a software agent and the agents cooperate to search the whole system through referrals. We present a static and a dynamic pricing mechanism to motivate each agent to behave rationally while still achieving good overall system performance. We study the behavior of the agents under two pricing mechanisms and evaluate the impact of free riding using simulations.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: AP2PC
• Authors: Bin Yu, Munindar P. Singh
• Keywords: AP2PC 2003, Free Riding, Peer-to-Peer System, Pricing Mechanisms