A hierarchical overlay with cluster-based reputation tree for dynamic peer-to-peer systems

Traditional peer-to-peer technologies and systems assume that people operate with desktop computers in fixed broadband networks. When people with modern mobile devices now access Internet and Web services much in the manner they used to on desktop computers, the classical peer-to-peer overlay models can be vulnerable in wireless and mobile networks. This paper proposes a hierarchical overlay architecture based on partially central and semi-structured overlay models for the deployment of peer-to-peer systems in dynamic network environments. To keep up system scalability and efficacy, this architecture design exploits peer locality and network proximity, and contends with several problems of peer churn, peer mobility, search redundancy and traffic overhead that become much stickier in dynamic network environments. This design also integrates the reputation notion to mitigate the free-riding problem in peer-to-peer systems. According to a special cluster-based reputation tree, the hierarchical overlay is adjustable to moderate unfair or imbalanced resource utilization over the system. Furthermore, the cluster hierarchy is resilient to any points of failure at peer clusters in the overlay topology. Therefore, the effort of this study achieves an efficient and robust overlay architecture in dynamic network environments. Simulation results show that the proposed architecture is not only scalable to peer population, but also sustainable to peer- and network-initiated dynamics and influences in peer-to-peer systems.