Detection of selfish nodes in peer-to-peer networks

P2P applications are primarily used for sharing data (music/video) among large number of users, which requires a high level of accessibility of required resources. Distributed co-operation among users is a vital factor for the success of these networks. Any presences of selfish node can greatly degrade the performance. A selfish node preserves its own resources while uses the services of others and consumes their resources. In this paper the behavior of selfish nodes is analyzed, keeping in view the routing functionality of unstructured networks using GNUtella protocol v0.4. Oversight nodes/Trusted nodes were created to detect selfish nodes from unstructured network. Main purpose of these trusted nodes was to maintain download information of each regular node in network. By creating oversight nodes prevention from selfish nodes were done effectively and efficiently.