Reciprocity with virtual nodes: Supporting mobile peers in Peer-to-Peer content distribution

The Peer-to-Peer (P2P) paradigm offers scalable means to perform bulk data distribution, e.g., for small businesses which cannot afford huge upfront investments, by incorporating user's resources in the dissemination process. Due to the proliferation of smartphones with wireless broadband connectivity and the increasing convergence of fixed and mobile platforms, a growing number of users are expected to participate in P2P content distribution networks wirelessly. However, the P2P approach only works if users are willing to contribute resources. A commonly applied incentive scheme is the well-known Tit-for-Tat approach, where each peer is forced to contribute as much bandwidth to the network as he consumes. Nevertheless, reciprocal schemes discriminate resource poor mobile devices in terms of energy and upload bandwidth, as they are device-bound instead of being user-bound. In this work, an incentive scheme featuring virtual nodes is presented, which allows mobile devices to seek help from other devices owned by its user, e.g., the user's home gateway or a supporting cloud instance. Preliminary results are presented in the scope of a P2P streaming scenario.