O-Torrent: A fair, robust, and free riding resistant P2P content distribution mechanism

Two fundamental and persistent problems that still confront BitTorrent are unfairness and free riding. This paper proposes O-Torrent, a P2P content distribution mechanism that is derived in principal from BitTorrent. O-Torrent deploys the concept of unidirectional transfers among groups of peers who are arranged in rings. Each peer in O-Torrent can construct one ring and admit peers to it. A peer who constructs a ring becomes its father and hence its administrator. O-Torrent is fair, each peer must upload and participate in the sharing process in order to download. It implements an effective Serve/Request incentive mechanism which enhances the robustness of the mechanism. Furthermore, our results suggest that O-Torrent performs more effectively in punishing free riding behavior and provides better performance than BitTorrent.