Reciprocal resource sharing in P2P environments
Dipyaman Banerjee, Sabyasachi Saha, Sandip Sen, Prithviraj Dasgupta · 2005
Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems enable users to share resources in a net-worked environment without worrying about issues such as scala-bility and load balancing. Unlike exchange of goods in a traditional market, resource exchange in P2P networks does not involve mone-tary transactions. This makes P2P systems vulnerable to problems including the free-rider problem that enables users to acquire re-sources without contributing anything, collusion between groups of users to incorrectly promote or malign other users, and zero-cost identity that enables nodes to obliterate unfavorable history without incurring any expenditure. Previous research addresses these is-sues using user-reputation, referrals, and shared history based tech-niques. Here, we describe a multi-agent based reciprocity mecha-nism where each user’s agent makes the decision to share a resource with a requesting user based on the amount of resources previously