László Toka, Attila Vidács
Managing users in a peer-to-peer storage system
When managing a peer-to-peer storage system, where users store their data on the disks of their peers for security, availability and accessibility reasons, the lack of incentives for peers to contribute to the service calls for suitable solutions. We suggest two different approaches: either each peer’s use of the service be limited to her contribution level (symmetric schemes), or that storage space be bought from and sold to peers by a system operator that seeks to maximize profit. Using a non-cooperative game model to take into account user selfishness, we study these mechanisms with respect to the social welfare performance measure, and give necessary and sufficient conditions for one scheme to socially outperform the other.