Game-Based Incentive Mechanisms for Cooperation in P2P Networks

Peer-to-Peer networks are gaining popularity as architecture for sharing resources. However, these systems easily suffer from a high level of free-riders, whereby some users consume resources without providing any resources. In order to reduce the free-riders and promote the cooperation among peers, we propose an incentive mechanism for cooperation based on game theory. Simulations show that the proposed mechanism can significantly improve the network performance as well as effectively alleviate peers only consuming resources in P2P networks.