HiPEC: A Hybrid P2P Model for Electronic Commerce

Decentralized and unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) network system is becoming one of the most popular file sharing systems on the Internet. Due to its prominent merit, a P2P network becomes an effective distribution channel for selling digital products on the Internet. But there are still many constraints curbing electronic commerce on P2P networks. The main problem is that peers can not get cost-efficient earnings equal to their contributions in traditional P2P system. In this paper, we construct a hybrid P2P system by introducing index peers into pure P2P system, HiPEC. It computes earnings for every peer according to its contribution using a profit model. Firstly, we define peer role model by analyzing peers' behaviors. Secondly, we define logical P2P system via using role model. Finally, we propose a profit model and its calculation algorithm. The algorithm runs in every peer independently and ensures global earnings equal to global payments dynamically. The main contributions of this paper include: 1) providing a P2P electronic commerce model that can deal with multi-participant transactions based on peers' contribution. Earning or payment is calculated per byte; 2) maintaining global profit balance dynamically without whole network information.