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Abstract : |
The new p2p networking paradigms offer new possibilities for content ditribution over the Internet. The lack of central management and control over the available information used by agents to make decisions is a key characteristic of p2p systems and influences their performance. Customer peers interchange roles with provider peers, and compete in this new networked econ-omy. In this paper we propose a model that treats peers as independent economic agents buying and selling content within the peer group and investigate the basic economic properties of such a market managed p2p content distribution network. Initially, we assume that no peer has the con-tent, and there is a substantial initial cost to bring the content within the group. The bargaining position and hence the price that can be posted by a given agent having the content depends on the cost to transport the content to the requesting peer, its value, and the number of other agents providing the same content. An individual agent may only know the probability distribution of these quantities, and hence has to make decisions that take into account the amount of available information. In our model, a content request results in a number of competitive offers by agents already having the content. We discuss the influence of parameters such as the maximum number of the competitive offers allowed, the popularity of the content, its value to the agents that purchase and resell it, and the transport costs to the proliferation of the content within the peer group, taking into account the risk of the first agent incurring the initial content cost., |
