Subjective and Objective Types of Trustworthiness in Peer-to-Peer(P2P) Overlay Networks

Each peer has to obtain information on objects distributed in networks by itself through communicating with its acquaintance peers. An acquaintance might hold obsolete, even incorrect information on objects due to the propagation delay of changed information on the object and faults of peers. It is critical to discuss how a peer can trust acquaintances. We discuss subjective and objective types of trustworthiness. The subjective trustworthiness on an acquaintance is obtained by directly interacting with the acquaintance. On the other hand, the objective trustworthiness on an acquaintance is obtained by collecting the subjective trustworthiness of other peers. If a peer is confident of its trustworthiness, the peer takes the subjective trustworthiness. We discuss what type of trustworthiness a peer uses on an acquaintance based on the confidence.