One important aspect in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks is resource management since the available resources depend on the contributions made by the peers. In the absence of incentives, empirical data shows that a majority of the participants do not contribute resources. In order to deter such free-riders, some P2P systems impose constrains on the participating peers which allow a peer to gain benefit from the system (download content) as long as his resource contribution to it (uploaded content) exceeds a certain threshold. Under these system imposed constraints, we derive optimal upload policies for each peer given his estimated future download requirements and his previous contribution to the system. Our results show considerable improvements in the cost-benefit function by employing the optimal policy compared to heuristic upload policies. Moreover, the proposed P2P model is very general, and can be employed for investigating different applications, usage scenarios etc.
['Ritesh Sood', 'M. van der Schaar']
Optimal upload policies for P2P networks with system imposed constraints