|
Archive@NYU >
NET Institute >
NET Institute Working Papers Series >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/28457
|
| Title: | On the Impact of Practical P2P Incentive Mechanisms on User Behavior |
| Authors: | Anagnostakis, Kostas G. - Institute for Infocomm Research
Harmantzis, Fotios C. - Stevens Institute of Technology
Ioannidis, Sotiris - Stevens Institute of Technology
Zghaibeh, Manaf - Stevens Institute of Technology |
| Issue Date: | 2006 |
| Series/Report no.: | NET Institute Working Paper;06-14 |
| Abstract: | In this paper we report on the results of a large-scale measurement
study of two popular peer-topeer systems, namely BitTorrent and eMule,
that use practical and lightweight incentive mechanisms to encourage
cooperation between users. We focus on identifying the strategic
behavior of users in response to those incentive mechanisms. Our results
illustrate a gap between what system designers and researchers expect
from users in reaction to an incentive mechanism, and how users react to
those incentives. In particular, we observe that the majority of
BitTorrent users appear to cooperate well, despite the existence of
known ways to tamper with the incentive mechanism, users engaging in
behavior that could be regarded as cheating comprised only around 10% of
BitTorrent’s population. That is, although we know that users can
easily cheat, they actually do not currently appear to cheat at a large
enough scale. In the eMule system, we identify several distinct classes
of users based on their behavior. A large fraction of users appears to
perceive cooperation as a good strategy, and openly share all the files
they obtained. Other users engage in more subtle strategic choices, by
actively optimizing the number and types of files they share in order to
improve their standing in eMule’s waiting queues; they tend to
remove files for which downloading is complete and keep a limited total
volume of files shared. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/28457 |
| Appears in Collections: | NET Institute Working Papers Series
|
All items in Faculty Digital Archive are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved.
|
