Game Theoretical Study on a Client-Controlled Deduplication Scheme

Data deduplication eliminates redundant data and is receiving increasing attention in cloud storage services due to the proliferation of big data and the demand for efficient storage. Various deduplication schemes have been proposed mainly from technological points of view. However, a deduplication scheme often involves multiple parties with conflict interests. How to design incentive mechanisms for data deduplication schemes and study their acceptance by all relevant stakeholders remain important open issues. In this paper, we propose an incentive mechanism for a client-controlled deduplication scheme and apply game theory to analyze its acceptance by all stakeholders. Besides theoretical analysis, we also conduct extensive experiments based on a real-world dataset to demonstrate the effectiveness of our incentive mechanism. The experiment results show that the incentive mechanism can increase deduplication percentage and suppress free-riding behaviors of data users.