Bootstrapping the Long Tail in Peer to Peer Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces an incentive mechanism for P2P systems using a parimutuel market, ensuring diverse content availability and real-time access regardless of content popularity.

Contribution

It presents a novel incentive mechanism that promotes content diversity and guarantees availability in P2P systems through a parimutuel market model.

Findings

Existence of equilibrium with a long tail in content distribution

Guarantees real-time provision of any content

Promotes diverse content offerings

Abstract

We describe an efficient incentive mechanism for P2P systems that generates a wide diversity of content offerings while responding adaptively to customer demand. Files are served and paid for through a parimutuel market similar to that commonly used for betting in horse races. An analysis of the performance of such a system shows that there exists an equilibrium with a long tail in the distribution of content offerings, which guarantees the real time provision of any content regardless of its popularity.