@article {IOPORT.05339641,
    author       = {Li, Minglu and Yu, Jiadi and Wu, Jie},
    title        = {Free-riding on bittorrent-like peer-to-peer file sharing systems: Modeling analysis and improvement.},
    year         = {2008},
    journal      = {IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems},
    volume       = {19},
    number       = {07},
    issn         = {1045-9219},
    pages        = {954-966},
    publisher    = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), New York, NY},
    doi          = {10.1109/TPDS.2007.70783},
    abstract     = {Summary: BitTorrent has emerged as a very popular peer-to-peer file sharing system, which uses an embedded set of incentive mechanisms to encourage contribution and prevent free-riding. However, the capability BitTorrent has of preventing free-riding needs further study. In this paper, we present a fluid model with two different classes of peers to capture the effect of free-riding on BitTorrent-like systems. With the model, we find that BitTorrent's incentive mechanism is successful in preventing free-riding in a system without seeds, but may not succeed in producing a disincentive for free-riding in a system with a high number of seeds. The reason for this is that BitTorrent does not employ any effective mechanisms for seeds to effectively guard against freeriding. Therefore, we propose a seed bandwidth allocation strategy for the BitTorrent system to reduce the effect of seeds on free-riding. Finally, simulation results are given, which validate what we have found in our analysis and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.},
    identifier   = {05339641},
}