Towards automatic social bootstrapping of peer-to-peer protocols

ABSTRACT

Current peer-to-peer systems rely on user intervention to install and update the software (protocols) that run on each node. We propose another direction where protocols are dynamically and automatically rolled-out over peers, with the peers themselves selecting those that are beneficial and rejecting those which are not. To achieve this, we argue that, new protocols should be "injected" live into a running P2P system, with peers themselves replicating them. This requires that peers select "socially beneficial" protocols even though they need to base this on their own individual performance evaluations. What we are proposing can be seen as a meta-protocol, which we call Automatic Social Bootstrapping, that intelligently selects and replicates those protocols that are for the social good --- that is, maximize the average utility of the entire population. We sketch an outline of the protocol and present some initial high-level simulation results. Finally we identify several open issues that need to be addressed in order to further develop the approach.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.2 Network Protocols
      C.2.3 Network Operations
          Subjects: Network management

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.2 Automatic Programming
  I.5 PATTERN RECOGNITION
      I.5.4 Applications