Classical cloud storage based on external data providers has been recognized
to suffer from a number of drawbacks. This is due to its inherent centralized
architecture which makes it vulnerable to external attacks, malware, technical
failures, as well to the large premium charged for business purposes. In this
paper, we propose an alternative distributed peer-to-peer cloud storage model
which is based on the observation that the users themselves often have
available storage capabilities to be offered in principle to other users. Our
set-up is that of a network of users connected through a graph, each of them
being at the same time a source of data to be stored externally and a possible
storage resource. We cast the peer-to-peer storage model to a Potential Game
and we propose an original decentralized algorithm which makes units interact,
cooperate, and store a complete back up of their data on their connected
neighbors. We present theoretical results on the algorithm as well a good
number of simulations which validate our approach.Comment: 10 page