Reward only is not enough: Evaluating and improving the fairness policy of the P2P file sharing network eMule/eDonkey - 10 views
started by Paul Francis on 26 Mar 12
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Newer and more easy to follow than my other article on the same subject, "Resisting free-riding behaviour in BitTorrent", this article once again proposes a solution to free-riders who download without reciprocating. It looks specifically at the example of Emule/Edonkey, which interestingly already has a "credit" based system which is purposed with creating fairness over the long term. This article looks into this system in detail and performs real world experiments on it and finds it lacking. It proposes its own solution while still adhering to the basic principles that Emule/Edonkey's system does and tests it in simulations.
Free-riding seems to be the main recurring issue with BitTorrent and it does not help contribute to the collaboration that occurs. This article also observes that new users can be seen as free-riders. One interesting flaw in this and other similar solutions is that it may alienate new users by restricting them before they have even had a chance to contribute anything. Emule/Edonkey's current credit based system does not identify and punish free-riders and this is immediately identified as a flaw by the article, and the unfairness of free-riders being able to download at comparable speeds to real contributors is assumed to be something that needs rectifying.
Authors has classified three kinds of requestors, one is who contribute enough content to general peer. General peep will provide all its know source information. A requestor who has lower credit value or without credit, general peer controlling their downloading rate according to their uploading rate. The strangers, as same as free-riders, general peer will only provide very few resources to them. Negative credit will be attached with them while they only ask for resources. There will be no more source information provide once the negative credit reach a pre-defined value.
Authors argue that the performance of the whole P2P file sharing system greatly depends on each peer's cooperation. Free-riders have broken the value of collaboration as they only require for sources and do not upload their own content. This article does not relevant to my selected paper, however, it is a good resource to inspect the relationship between free riders and general peers.
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