A game-theoretic approach for cooperation stimulation in peer-to-peer streaming networks

With high scalability, high video streaming quality, and low bandwidth requirement, peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming systems are gradually replacing their server-client-based counterparts in the realm of delivering multimedia content over the internet. However, current P2P streaming systems are suffering from “free-riding” due to the peers´ selfish nature. In this paper, we propose a credit-based incentive mechanism to encourage peers to cooperate with each other. The proposed mechanism provides service differentiation for peers with different credits and connection types through biased resource allocation. A Stackelberg game is formulated to obtain the optimal resource allocation strategy, which can jointly maximize the revenue of the uploader and the utilities of the downloaders. Especially, the selfish nature of peers is taken into consideration when designing the utility functions of the Stackelberg game. It is shown that the proposed resource allocation scheme is effective in providing service differentiation for peers and stimulating them to make contribution to the P2P streaming system.