Stability of P2P Networks Under Greedy Peering (Full Version)
Lucianna Kiffer, Rajmohan Rajaraman

TL;DR
This paper investigates the stability and properties of peer-to-peer networks when nodes adopt greedy strategies to optimize their connections, revealing that such strategies tend to produce low-diameter, but performance-disparate, stable networks.
Contribution
It introduces a model analyzing greedy peer selection in P2P networks, proves equilibrium existence, characterizes stability under local knowledge, and provides extensive simulations of network evolution.
Findings
Stable networks are low-diameter.
Greedy strategies lead to performance disparity.
Stability regimes depend on network parameters.
Abstract
Major cryptocurrency networks have relied on random peering choice rules for making connections in their peer-to-peer networks. Generally, these choices have good properties, particularly for open, permissionless networks. Random peering choices however do not take into account that some actors may choose to optimize who they connect to such that they are quicker to hear about information being propagated in the network. In this paper, we explore the dynamics of such greedy strategies. We study a model in which nodes select peers with the objective of minimizing their average distance to a designated subset of nodes in the network, and consider the impact of several factors including the peer selection process, degree constraints, and the size of the designated subset. The latter is particularly interesting in the context of blockchain networks as generally only a subset of nodes are…
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Taxonomy
TopicsPeer-to-Peer Network Technologies · Caching and Content Delivery · Cooperative Communication and Network Coding
