Free Riding in P2P Networks

Free Riding in P2P Networks

Free riding is the process utilising the resources of the peer to peer network without reasonably contributing back to it.

P2P system or a peer to peer communication model sustains purely on the contributions of the peers, where no central resources location of management is not available.

As a result, free riding node act as a leech on the system which is making an impact on the system on performance aspects as well as resources availability aspects.

The most popular example of free riding is downloading a resource like a file, software or a video content from a public torrent site, where the client immediately terminate the torrent client just after the  download  completion without start seeding.

As a result,  private torrent sites have been defined to maintain the performance and the resource availability by enforcing a download/ upload ratio, where you should return back in some ratio to the network to maintain the account in active mode and earn some reputation or points.