Lottery-based Pricing Scheme for Peer to Peer Networks

Users in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks tend to exploit the maximum resources they are able to obtain, offering minimum resources in response. This behavior undermines the goal of P2P in spreading files through the network and imposes the concept of free-riding. In this paper we propose a Lottery-based pricing mechanism to enhance the sharing level in P2P network and help increasing the number of objects disseminated. The scheme is an extension of the traditional micropayment mechanism. Our scheme provides higher payoff for peers who contribute to the P2P network and higher cost for peers who act selfishly and choose not to share resources. Finally, we present our simulation results to demonstrate the performance of our proposed mechanism.