Peer-to-Peer Networks and Computation: Current Trends and Future Perspectives

This research papers examines the state-of-the-art in the area of P2P networks/computation. It attempts to identify the challenges that confront the community of P2P researchers and developers, which need to be addressed before the potential of P2P-based systems, can be effectively realized beyond content distribution and file-sharing applications to build real-world, intelligent and commercial software systems. Future perspectives and some thoughts on the evolution of P2P-based systems are also provided

Incentive Mechanisms in Peer-to-Peer Networks — A Systematic Literature Review

Centralized networks inevitably exhibit single points of failure that malicious actors regularly target. Decentralized networks are more resilient if numerous participants contribute to the network’s functionality. Most decentralized networks employ incentive mechanisms to coordinate the participation and cooperation of peers and thereby ensure the functionality and security of the network. This article systematically reviews incentive mechanisms for decentralized networks and networked systems by covering 165 prior literature reviews and 178 primary research papers published between 1993 and October 2022. Of the considered sources, we analyze 11 literature reviews and 105 primary research papers in detail by categorizing and comparing the distinctive properties of the presented incentive mechanisms. The reviewed incentive mechanisms establish fairness and reward participation and cooperative behavior. We review work that substitutes central authority through independent and subjective mechanisms run in isolation at each participating peer and work that applies multiparty computation. We use monetary, reputation, and service rewards as categories to differentiate the implementations and evaluate each incentive mechanism’s data management, attack resistance, and contribution model. Further, we highlight research gaps and deficiencies in reproducibility and comparability. Finally, we summarize our assessments and provide recommendations to apply incentive mechanisms to decentralized networks that share computational resources

A HOLISTIC REDUNDANCY- AND INCENTIVE-BASED FRAMEWORK TO IMPROVE CONTENT AVAILABILITY IN PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology has emerged as an important alternative to the traditional client-server communication paradigm to build large-scale distributed systems. P2P enables the creation, dissemination and access to information at low cost and without the need of dedicated coordinating entities. However, existing P2P systems fail to provide high-levels of content availability, which limit their applicability and adoption. This dissertation takes a holistic approach to device mechanisms to improve content availability in large-scale P2P systems. Content availability in P2P can be impacted by hardware failures and churn. Hardware failures, in the form of disk or node failures, render information inaccessible. Churn, an inherent property of P2P, is the collective effect of the users’ uncoordinated behavior, which occurs when a large percentage of nodes join and leave frequently. Such a behavior reduces content availability significantly. Mitigating the combined effect of hardware failures and churn on content availability in P2P requires new and innovative solutions that go beyond those applied in existing distributed systems. To addresses this challenge, the thesis proposes two complementary, low cost mechanisms, whereby nodes self-organize to overcome failures and improve content availability. The first mechanism is a low complexity and highly flexible hybrid redundancy scheme, referred to as Proactive Repair (PR). The second mechanism is an incentive-based scheme that promotes cooperation and enforces fair exchange of resources among peers. These mechanisms provide the basis for the development of distributed self-organizing algorithms to automate PR and, through incentives, maximize their effectiveness in realistic P2P environments. Our proposed solution is evaluated using a combination of analytical and experimental methods. The analytical models are developed to determine the availability and repair cost properties of PR. The results indicate that PR’s repair cost outperforms other redundancy schemes. The experimental analysis was carried out using simulation and the development of a testbed. The simulation results confirm that PR improves content availability in P2P. The proposed mechanisms are implemented and tested using a DHT-based P2P application environment. The experimental results indicate that the incentive-based mechanism can promote fair exchange of resources and limits the impact of uncooperative behaviors such as “free-riding”

A connection management protocol for promoting cooperation in Peer-to-Peer networks

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The existence of a high degree of free riding in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks is an important threat that should be addressed while designing P2P protocols. In this paper we propose a connection-based solution that will help to reduce the free riding effects on a P2P network and discourage free riding. Our solution includes a novel P2P connection type and an adaptive connection management protocol that dynamically establishes and adapts a P2P network topology considering the contributions of peers. The aim of the protocol is to bring contributing peers closer to each other on the adapted topology and to push the free riders away from the contributors. In this way contribution is promoted and free riding is discouraged. Unlike some other proposals against free riding, our solution does not require any permanent identification of peers or a security infrastructure for maintaining a global reputation system. It is shown through simulation experiments that there is a significant improvement in performance for contributing peers in a network that applies our protocol. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Peer to Peer Information Retrieval: An Overview

Peer-to-peer technology is widely used for file sharing. In the past decade a number of prototype peer-to-peer information retrieval systems have been developed. Unfortunately, none of these have seen widespread real- world adoption and thus, in contrast with file sharing, information retrieval is still dominated by centralised solutions. In this paper we provide an overview of the key challenges for peer-to-peer information retrieval and the work done so far. We want to stimulate and inspire further research to overcome these challenges. This will open the door to the development and large-scale deployment of real-world peer-to-peer information retrieval systems that rival existing centralised client-server solutions in terms of scalability, performance, user satisfaction and freedom

Economic issues in distributed computing

textOn the Internet, one of the essential characteristics of electronic commerce is the integration of large-scale computer networks and business practices. Commercial servers are connected through open and complex communication technologies, and online consumers access the services with virtually unpredictable behavior. Both of them as well as the e-Commerce infrastructure are vulnerable to cyber attacks. Among the various network security problems, the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is a unique example to illustrate the risk of commercial network applications. Using a massive junk traffic, literally anyone on the Internet can launch a DDoS attack to flood and shutdown an eCommerce website. Cooperative technological solutions for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are already available, yet organizations in the best position to implement them lack incentive to do so, and the victims of DDoS attacks cannot find effective methods to motivate the organizations. Chapter 1 discusses two components of the technological solutions to DDoS attacks: cooperative filtering and cooperative traffic smoothing by caching, and then analyzes the broken incentive chain in each of these technological solutions. As a remedy, I propose usage-based pricing and Capacity Provision Networks, which enable victims to disseminate enough incentive along attack paths to stimulate cooperation against DDoS attacks. Chapter 2 addresses possible Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks toward the wireless Internet including the Wireless Extended Internet, the Wireless Portal Network, and the Wireless Ad Hoc network. I propose a conceptual model for defending against DDoS attacks on the wireless Internet, which incorporates both cooperative technological solutions and economic incentive mechanisms built on usage-based fees. Cost-effectiveness is also addressed through an illustrative implementation scheme using Policy Based Networking (PBN). By investigating both technological and economic difficulties in defense of DDoS attacks which have plagued the wired Internet, our aim here is to foster further development of wireless Internet infrastructure as a more secure and efficient platform for mobile commerce. To avoid centralized resources and performance bottlenecks, online peer-to-peer communities and online social network have become increasingly popular. In particular, the recent boost of online peer-to-peer communities has led to exponential growth in sharing of user-contributed content which has brought profound changes to business and economic practices. Understanding the dynamics and sustainability of such peer-to-peer communities has important implications for business managers. In Chapter 3, I explore the structure of online sharing communities from a dynamic process perspective. I build an evolutionary game model to capture the dynamics of online peer-to-peer communities. Using online music sharing data collected from one of the IRC Channels for over five years, I empirically investigate the model which underlies the dynamics of the music sharing community. Our empirical results show strong support for the evolutionary process of the community. I find that the two major parties in the community, namely sharers and downloaders, are influencing each other in their dynamics of evolvement in the community. These dynamics reveal the mechanism through which peer-to-peer communities sustain and thrive in a constant changing environment.Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM

The Looming Bandwidth Crunch—Legitimate Crisis, or Cyberspace Chicken Little?

Global Internet usage has fueled much of the technological innovation seen during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a commensurate increase in consumption of bandwidth, the measure of how much information the Internet can transmit. However, bandwidth is not an inexhaustible resource. Wired communications require physical infrastructure, requiring considerable investment and construction to expand, and wireless communications require sections of electromagnetic spectrum, which has grown much more crowded. This article examines the current bandwidth situation in light of networking trends and events as of 2010. Findings indicate that, although there is no immediate bandwidth crisis, one may eventually come, especially in the wireless spectrum, and, although technological innovation may provide a considerable hedge against the crippling impli-cations of such a shortage, care must be taken to manage growth in bandwidth usage to maintain it at acceptable levels while accounting for the needs of all concerned parties

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationWe develop a novel framework for friend-to-friend (f2f) distributed services (F3DS) by which applications can easily offer peer-to-peer (p2p) services among social peers with resource sharing governed by approximated levels of social altruism. Our frame- work differs significantly from typical p2p collaboration in that it provides a founda- tion for distributed applications to cooperate based on pre-existing trust and altruism among social peers. With the goal of facilitating the approximation of relative levels of altruism among social peers within F3DS, we introduce a new metric: SocialDistance. SocialDistance is a synthetic metric that combines direct levels of altruism between peers with an altruism decay for each hop to approximate indirect levels of altruism. The resulting multihop altruism levels are used by F3DS applications to proportion and prioritize the sharing of resources with other social peers. We use SocialDistance to implement a novel flash file/patch distribution method, SocialSwarm. SocialSwarm uses the SocialDistance metric as part of its resource allocation to overcome the neces- sity of (and inefficiency created by) resource bartering among friends participating in a BitTorrent swarm. We find that SocialSwarm achieves an average file download time reduction of 25% to 35% in comparison with standard BitTorrent under a variety of configurations and conditions, including file sizes, maximum SocialDistance, as well as leech and seed counts. The most socially connected peers yield up to a 47% decrease in download completion time in comparison with average nonsocial BitTorrent swarms. We also use the F3DS framework to implement novel malware detection application- F3DS Antivirus (F3AV)-and evaluate it on the Amazon cloud. We show that with f2f sharing of resources, F3AV achieves a 65% increase in the detection rate of 0- to 1-day-old malware among social peers as compared to the average of individual scanners. Furthermore, we show that F3AV provides the greatest diversity of mal- ware scanners (and thus malware protection) to social hubs-those nodes that are positioned to provide strategic defense against socially aware malware