Dandelion: Cooperative Content Distribution with Robust Incentives

Online content distribution has increasingly gained popularity among the entertainment industry and the consumers alike. A key challenge in online content distribution is a cost-efficient solution to handle demand peaks. To address this challenge, we propose Dandelion, a system for robust cooperative (peer-to-peer) content distribution. Dandelion explicitly addresses two crucial issues in cooperative content distribution. First, it provides robust incentives for clients who possess content to serve others. A client that honestly serves other clients is rewarded with credit that can be redeemed for future downloads at the content server. Second, Dandelion discourages unauthorized content distribution. A client that uploads to a receiver is rewarded for his service only after the server has verified the receiver’s legitimacy. Our preliminary evaluation of a prototype system running on commodity hardware with 1 Mbps access link indicates that Dandelion can achieve aggregate client do...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: USENIX
• Authors: Michael Sirivianos, Jong Han Park, Xiaowei Yang, Stanislaw Jarecki
• Keywords: Content Distribution, Cooperative Content Distribution, Online Content Distribution, Operating System, USENIX 2007