This Article 
   
 Share 
   
 Bibliographic References 
   
 Add to: 
 
Digg
Furl
Spurl
Blink
Simpy
Google
Del.icio.us
Y!MyWeb
 
 Search 
   
Free-Riding on BitTorrent-Like Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems: Modeling Analysis and Improvement
July 2008 (vol. 19 no. 7)
pp. 954-966
ASCII Text
x 
 
Minglu Li, Jiadi Yu, Jie Wu, "Free-Riding on BitTorrent-Like Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems: Modeling Analysis and Improvement," IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 19, no. 7, pp. 954-966, July, 2008.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/TPDS.2007.70783,
author = {Minglu Li and Jiadi Yu and Jie Wu},
title = {Free-Riding on BitTorrent-Like Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems: Modeling Analysis and Improvement},
journal ={IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems},
volume = {19},
number = {7},
issn = {1045-9219},
year = {2008},
pages = {954-966},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TPDS.2007.70783},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - JOUR
JO - IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
TI - Free-Riding on BitTorrent-Like Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems: Modeling Analysis and Improvement
IS - 7
SN - 1045-9219
SP954
EP966
EPD - 954-966
A1 - Minglu Li,
A1 - Jiadi Yu,
A1 - Jie Wu,
PY - 2008
KW - Bandwidth Allocation Strategy
KW - BitTorrent
KW - Free-riding
KW - Incentive Mechanism
KW - modeling
VL - 19
JA - IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
ER -
 
BitTorrent has emerged as a very popular peer-to-peer file sharing system, which uses an embedded set of incentive mechanisms to encourage contribution and prevent free-riding. However, the capability BitTorrent has of preventing free-riding needs further study. In this paper, we present a fluid model with two different classes of peers to capture the effect of free-riding on BitTorrent-like systems. With the model, we find that BitTorrent's incentive mechanism is successful in preventing free-riding in a system without seeds, but may not succeed in producing a disincentive for free-riding in a system with a high number of seeds. The reason for this is that BitTorrent does not employ any effective mechanisms for seeds to effectively guard against freeriding. Therefore, we propose a seed bandwidth allocation strategy for the BitTorrent system to reduce the effect of seeds on free-riding. Finally, simulation results are given, which validate what we have found in our analysis and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.

[1] E. Adar and B.A. Huberman, “Free-Riding on Gnutella,” FirstMonday, vol. 5, no. 10, Oct. 2000.
[2] D. Hughes, G. Coulson, and J. Walkerdine, “Free-Riding on Gnutella Revisited: The Bell Tolls,” IEEE Distributed Systems Online, vol. 6, no. 6, 2005.
[3] S. Saroiu, P.K. Gummadi, and S.D. Gribble, “A Measurement Study of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems,” Proc. Conf. Multimedia Computing and Networking (MMCN '02), Jan. 2002.
[4] BitTorrent, Inc., BitTorrent Web Site, http:/www.bittorrent.com, 2001-2005.
[5] B. Cohen, “Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent,” Proc. ACM SIGCOMM Workshop Economics of Peer-to-Peer Systems (P2PECON), 2003.
[6] A. Parker, The True Picture of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing, http:/www.cachelogic.com/, 2004.
[7] A.R. Bharambe, C. Herley, and V.N. Padmanabhan, “Analyzing and Improving BitTorrent Performance,” Technical Report MSR-TR-2005-03, Microsoft Research, Feb. 2005.
[8] S. Jun and M. Ahamad, “Incentives in BitTorrent Induce FreeRiding,” Proc. ACM SIGCOMM Workshop Economics of Peer-to-Peer Systems (P2PECON '05), Aug. 2005.
[9] D. Qiu and R. Srikant, “Modeling and Performance Analysis of BitTorrent-Like Peer-to-Peer Networks,” Proc. ACM SIGCOMM'04, Aug. 2004.
[10] M. Yang, Z. Zhang, X. Li, and Y. Dai, “An Empirical Study of Free-Riding Behavior in the Maze P2P File-Sharing System,” Proc. Fourth Int'l Workshop Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS '05), Feb. 2005.
[11] R. Krishnan, M. Smith, Z. Tang, and R. Telang, “The Virtual Commons: Why Free-Riding Can Be Tolerated in Peer-to-Peer Networks,” Proc. Workshop Information Systems and Economics (WISE '03), Dec. 2003.
[12] M. Feldman, C. Papadimitriou, J. Chuang, and I. Stoica, “Free-Riding and Whitewashing in Peer-to-Peer Systems,” Proc.ACM SIGCOMM Workshop Practice and Theory of Incentives in Networked Systems (PINS '04), Aug. 2004.
[13] KaZaA, http:/www.kazaa.com, 2006.
[14] eMule, http:/www.emule-project.net, 2006.
[15] L. Guo, S. Chen, Z. Xiao, E. Tan, X. Ding, and X. Zhang, “Measurements, Analysis, and Modeling of BitTorrent-Like Systems,” Proc. Internet Measurement Conf. (IMC '05), Oct. 2005.
[16] M. Izal, G. Urvoy-Keller, E. Biersack, P. Felber, A. Hamra, and L. Garces-Erice, “Dissecting BitTorrent: Five Months in a Torrents Lifetime,” Proc. Fifth Passive and Active Measurements Workshop (PAM '04), Apr. 2004.
[17] J.A. Pouwelse, P. Garbacki, D.H.J. Epema, and H.J. Sips, “AMeasurement Study of the BitTorrent Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing System,” Technical Report PDS-2004-003, Delft Univ. of Technology, The Netherlands, Apr. 2004.
[18] J.A. Pouwelse, P. Garbacki, D.H.J. Epema, and H.J. Sips, “TheBitTorrent P2P File-Sharing System: Measurements and Analysis,” Proc. Fourth Int'l Workshop Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS'05), Feb. 2005.
[19] Z. Ge, D.R. Figueiredo, S. Jaiswal, J. Kurose, and D. Towsley, “Modeling Peer-Peer File Sharing Systems,” Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, 2003.
[20] K. Ramachandran and B. Sikdar, “An Analytic Framework forModeling Peer to Peer Networks,” Proc. IEEE INFOCOM '05, Mar. 2005.
[21] X. Yang and G. de Veciana, “Service Capacity of Peer to Peer Networks,” Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, 2004.
[22] Y. Tian, D. Wu, and K.-W. Ng, “Modeling, Analysis and Improvement for BitTorrent-Like File Sharing Networks,” Proc.IEEE INFOCOM, 2006.
[23] F.L. Piccolo, G. Neglia, and G. Bianchi, “The Effect of Heterogeneous Link Capacities in BitTorrent-Like File Sharing Systems,” Proc. Int'l Workshop Hot Topics in Peer-to-Peer Systems (HOT-P2P), 2004.
[24] F. Clvenot-Perronnin and K.R.P. Nain, “Multiclass P2P Networks: Static Resource Allocation for Service Differentiation and Bandwidth Diversity,” Proc. 24th Int'l Symp. Computer Performance, Modeling, Measurements and Evaluation (Performance), 2005.
[25] D. Bertsekas and R. Gallager, Data Networks. Prentice Hall, 1987.
[26] N. Liogkas, R. Nelson, E. Kohler, and L. Zhang, “Exploiting BitTorrent for Fun (but Not Profit),” Proc. Fifth Int'l Workshop Peer-to-Peer Systems(IPTPS '06), Feb. 2006.
[27] A. Srinivasan, J. Teitelbaum, and J. Wu, “DRBTS: Distributed Reputation-Based Beacon Trust System,” Proc. Second IEEE Int'l Symp. Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing (DASC), 2006.
[28] S.D. Kamvar, M.T. Schlosser, and H. Garcia-Molina, “The EigenTrust Algorithm for Reputation Management in P2P Networks,” Proc. 12th Int'l World Wide Web Conf. (WWW '03), May 2003.
[29] F.P. Kelly, “Mathematical Modelling of the Internet,” Mathematics Unlimited—2001 and Beyond, B. Engquist and W. Schmid, eds., pp.685-702, Springer, 2001.

Index Terms:
Bandwidth Allocation Strategy, BitTorrent, Free-riding, Incentive Mechanism, modeling
Citation:
Minglu Li, Jiadi Yu, Jie Wu, "Free-Riding on BitTorrent-Like Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems: Modeling Analysis and Improvement," IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 19, no. 7, pp. 954-966, July 2008, doi:10.1109/TPDS.2007.70783
Usage of this product signifies your acceptance of the Terms of Use.