Bootstrapping the Long Tail in Peer to Peer Systems

Overview

The provision of digitized content on-demand to millions of users presents a formidable challenge. With an ever increasing number of fixed and mobile devices with video capabilities, and a growing consumer base with different preferences, there is a need for a scalable and adaptive way of delivering a diverse set of files in real time to a worldwide consumer base. This paper describes an efficient incentive mechanism for P2P systems that generates a wide diversity of content offerings while responding adaptively to customer demand. The paper then analyzes the performance of such a system by making a set of assumptions that are first restrictive and are then relaxed so as to make them correspond to a realistic crowd of users.