A mechanism to control free-riding in P2P networks

The phenomenon of free-riding (users consuming network resources without providing resources to the network) is common in peer-to-peer (P2P) systems. In the ideal case, P2P networks will exhibit both non-excludability and non-rivalry. And a recent research showed that P2P networks could operate effectively in the presence of significant free-riding. However, in the presence of free-riding, P2P networks will exhibit levels of rivalry. Many researchers have attempted to prevent the free-riding in P2P networks. In the paper, we propose a mechanism to control the free-riding, not to prevent. One peer does not control the free-riding until its traffic is close to overload in the mechanism. The mechanism can make users (including free-riding) share files easily and sustain the performance of system at the same time.