On the cost-ineffectiveness of redundancy in commercial P2P computing

We present a game-theoretic model of the interactions between server and clients in a constrained family of commercial P2P computations (where clients are financially compensated for work). We study the cost of implementing redundant task allocation (redundancy, for short) as a means of preventing cheating. Under the assumption that clients are motivated solely by the desire to maximize expected profit, we prove that, within this framework, redundancy is cost effective only when collusion among clients, including the Sybil attack, can be prevented. We show that in situations where this condition cannot be met, non-redundant task allocation is much less costly than redundancy. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.2.0 [General]: Security and protection; C.2.5 [Local and Wide-Area Networks]: Internet General Terms Security, Theory Keywords P2P Computing, Game Theory, Redundancy, Collusion

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: CCS
• Authors: Matthew Yurkewych, Brian Neil Levine, Arnold L. Rosenberg
• Keywords: CCS 2005, Commercial P2p Computations, Redundant Task Allocation, Security Privacy, Task Allocation