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Contribution Details
| Type | Working Paper |
| Scope | Discipline-based scholarship |
| Title | Sharing in BitTorrent can be Rational |
| Organization Unit |
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| Authors |
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| Language |
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| Series Name | Harvard University |
| Number | 1 |
| Date | 2011 |
| Abstract Text | The widely used BitTorrent protocol is regularly extended to produce new protocols with empirically preferable characteristics, like shorter le acquisition times and fewer upload bandwidth usage. How- ever, these advances have outpaced theoretical understanding, necessary for formally analyzing the eciency and rationality of existing protocols, and the design of new ones. We address this discrepancy by presenting a new model, a stochastic \goal oriented" game, that captures BitTorrent's salient features more accurately. In particular, players only obtain a posi- tive payo when all pieces of a le are acquired. Our model leads to equi- librium results that are distinct from prior work. We show that without altruists, it is irrational for peers to share with each other using BitTor- rent, while with altruists, a sharing equilibrium exists. Furthermore, we present the design of an expanded protocol using \cheap pseudonyms", such that sharing becomes an equilibrium even without the presence of altruists. The usefulness of cheap pseudonyms in this setting is surprising as it contrasts with prior research showing that cheap pseudonyms are a negative externality. |
| Official URL | http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~mruberry/RationalBitTorrent2011.pdf |
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