An advertising mechanism for P2P networks

In order for P2P systems to be viable, users must be given incentives to donate resources. Such incentives can be in the form of tit-for-tat like mechanisms, in which a user is rewarded with better service for contributing resources to the system. Alternatively, such incentives can be economical, i.e., users get paid for their contribution. In particular, the latter can be achieved through a P2P advertisement mechanism. This paper investigates how to incorporate an advertisement mechanism into a P2P system to serve as an incentive to donate resources, especially for services in which users often interact with the system through mobile devices. First, the precise P2P advertisement dissemination model is presented. Second, the paper proposes and explores several advertisement dissemination schemes combined with a few payment models and compares between them through simulations. The reported results are encouraging for this direction and in particular identify payment models whose payment is super-linear with the availability of donated machines. This means that they serve as good incentives for owners of donated machines to keep them connected to the P2P network for long durations.