Managing a peer-to-peer data storage system in a selfish society

Patrick Maillé (1) , Laszlo Toka (1)

1 RSM - Département Réseaux, Sécurité et Multimédia

We compare two possible mechanisms to manage a peer-to-peer storage system, where participants can store data online on the disks of peers in order to increase data availability and accessibility. Due to the lack of incentives for peers to contribute to the service, we suggest that either each peer’s use of the service be limited to her contribution level (symmetric schemes), or that storage space be bought from and sold to peers by a system operator that seeks to maximize profit. Using a noncooperative game model to take into account user selfishness, we study those mechanisms with respect to the social welfare performance measure, and give necessary and sufficient conditions for one scheme to socially outperform the other.

Mots clés: Peer to peer networks; Game theory; Incentives; Pricing

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]; Multimédia [cs.MM]

Patrick Maillé, Laszlo Toka. Managing a peer-to-peer data storage system in a selfish society. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2008, 26 (7), pp.1295 - 1301. ⟨10.1109/JSAC.2008.080926⟩. ⟨hal-02140921⟩