Cumulative Reputation Systems for Peer-to-Peer Content Distribution

Reputation systems can be used to provide incentives for cooperation among participants of peer-to-peer networks. In this paper, a survey of such systems is first provided. We then focus on content distribution networks that have honest but rationally selfish users. A reputation framework is proposed that, for special cases, can be proved to converge in mean to "reveal" the true propensity of peer nodes to cooperate. Based on this framework a game is designed in which users play to maximize the files received from the system by adjusting their cooperation level and gaining a better reputation as a result.