Efficient Trust Aware Resource Allocation in Distributed Computing Environments

Dynamic distributed computing environments are composed by various entities, which, seeking for the maximization of their welfare while achieving their own goals and aims, may act selfishly, thus, leading to a significant deterioration of system’s performance. In general, system entities may be classified into two main categories: the Resource Requestors (RRs) wishing to use and/or exploit resources offered by the other system entities and the Resource Providers (RPs) that offer the resources requested. In this study, a reputation mechanism is proposed which helps estimating RPs trustworthiness, taking into account their past performance in consistently satisfying RRs’ expectations. The trust management framework is distributed, considers both first-hand information (acquired from the RR’s direct past experiences with the RPs) and second-hand information (disseminated from other RRs), while it exhibits a robust behaviour against inaccurate reputation ratings. The designed mechanisms have been empirically evaluated, exhibiting improved performance with respect to random RP selection.