vINCENT: An incentive scheme supporting heterogeneity in Peer-to-Peer content distribution

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) has proven to be a scalable approach for content distribution, while reducing the load for the content provider. As P2P systems depend on each node's participation, reciprocal incentive mechanisms for stimulating contribution are a major building block in those systems. However, reciprocal incentive schemes fall short for resource-poor devices, as they lead to service degradation for those nodes. This paper presents vINCENT, an incentive scheme allowing resource-poor devices to seek support from resource-rich devices. The novel scheme is based on virtual nodes which form a trusted domain around multiple devices. vINCENT has been implemented and evaluated in a P2P live streaming scenario. The solution provides good playback quality to all devices within a virtual node, given a sufficient contribution of the virtual node as a whole. At the same time, free riding nodes are isolated efficiently and the game theoretic properties of reciprocity are preserved.