Decision Strategies for a P2P Computing System

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing (also called ‘public-resource computing’) is an effective approach to perform computation of large tasks. Currently used P2P computing systems (e.g., BOINC) are most often centrally managed, i.e., the final result of computations is created at a central node using partial results – what may be not efficient in the case when numerous participants are willing to download the final result. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to P2P computing systems. We assume that results can be delivered to all peers in a distributed way using three types of network flows: unicast, Peer-to-Peer and anycast. We describe our concept of the system architecture with a special focus on the decision strategies developed for system participants. Using our discrete realtime simulator we evaluate the proposed strategies in various scenarios and present a comprehensive analysis of obtained results. According to obtained results, the Peer-to-Peer flow provides lower operational cost of the computing system compared to unicast and anycast flows. Moreover, an appropriate selection of decision strategy can significantly reduce the operational cost.