Avoiding Greediness in Cooperative Peer-to-Peer Networks

In peer-to-peer networks, peers simultaneously play the role of client and server. Since the introduction of the first file-sharing protocols, peer-to-peer networking currently causes more than 35% of all internet network traffic— with an ever increasing tendency. A common file-sharing protocol that occupies most of the peer-to-peer traffic is the BitTorrent protocol. Although based on cooperative principles, in practice it is doomed to fail if peers behave greedily. In this work-in-progress paper, we model the protocol by introducing the game named Tit-for-Tat Network Termination (T4TNT) that gives an interesting access to the greediness problem of the BitTorrent protocol. Simulations conducted under this model indicate that greediness can be reduced by solely manipulating the underlying peer-to-peer topology.