Nash equilibria in bandwidth allocation for non-cooperative peer-to-peer networks

In peer-to-peer networks, peers act as clients and servers, i.e., they can download files from others and allow others to download from them, at the same time. Since the bandwidth of a,peer acting as server is shared among all its clients, the download rate experienced by a peer depends on the server choices of the other peers. We focus our investigation on the bandwidth allocation among the peers and model this system with non-cooperative game theory. We assume that peers are rational players that maximize their utility, corresponding to minimize their download time. We study the existence of Nash equilibrium points under a very simple server selection policy and show that it is efficiency from the point of view of the bandwidth utilization. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.