Trust overlay networks for global reputation aggregation in P2P grid computing

This paper presents a new approach to trusted grid computing in a peer-to-peer (P2P) setting. Trust and security are essential to establish lasting working relationships among the peers. A P2P reputation system collects peer trust scores and aggregates them to yield a global reputation. We use a new trust overlay network (TON) to model the trust relationships among the peers. After analyzing the eBay transaction trace data, we discover a power-law distribution in user feedbacks. We develop a new reputation system, PowerTrust, to leverage power-law feedback characteristics. The PowerTrust system is built with locality-preserving hash functions and a lookahead random walk strategy. Dynamic system reconfiguration is enabled by the use of power nodes with well-established reputations. Through P2P simulation experiments on distributed file sharing and grid parameter-sweeping applications (PSA), we demonstrate the PowerTrust advantages in fast reputation convergence and accurate ranking of peer reputations. We report performance results with enhanced P2P query success rate, shortened job makespan, and increased job success rate in scalable P2P grid applications.