Improved Hybrid Architecture to Mitigate Free Riding in P2p Network

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Author(s)

Akinboro Solomon 1,* Tunwashe Daniel. O. 1 Oladeji Florence A. 1 Akintunde Christian. T. 1 Idris Abdulkadri 1

1. Department of Computer Sciences, University of Lagos, Nigeria

* Corresponding author.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijwmt.2025.04.03

Received: 18 Nov. 2024 / Revised: 24 Feb. 2025 / Accepted: 20 Apr. 2025 / Published: 8 Aug. 2025

Index Terms

Free-riding, Peer-to-Peer Network, Dynamic Grace Period, Content Scanning Mechanism, Hybrid Architecture

Abstract

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks rely heavily on resources shared by peers in the network as a result of this mitigating free riding in the network is very crucial in a P2P system. In this work, we introduced a dynamic grace period allocation and a content scanning mechanism to a hybrid P2P architecture to mitigate free riding and prevent peers from uploading repeated and fake files within the network. The method introduced was simulated using Python programming language with peers selected at random to upload and download files representing a typical scenario of a P2P network. From the range of 0-500 and 600-2000, twenty different peers were selected at random the first scenario represents few peers and the second scenario represents many peers for analysis and experimentation purposes and also for the different percentages of free riders used for the experiment, this was chosen at random. Finally, we compared our method with a credit-based approach (CBA) that uses a common grace period assigned to peers in the network. Then, for the performance evaluation metric, we used the total uploads and downloads, contributing peers uploads and downloads, free rider peers uploads and downloads, and repeated and fake files detected gotten from the simulation result to evaluate the model and analyze the outcome of the experiments. Results from the simulation revealed that the Dynamic grace period approach (DGA) is 25-70% more effective than CBA in maintaining contributing peer activity and preventing the spread of repeated and fake files,while also achieving lower latency, higher throughput, and better quality of service (QoS) across diverse network conditions, particularly in high free-rider environments. 

Cite This Paper

Akinboro Solomon, Tunwashe Daniel. O., Oladeji Florence A., Akintunde Christian. T., Idris Abdulkadri, "Improved Hybrid Architecture to Mitigate Free Riding in P2p Network", International Journal of Wireless and Microwave Technologies(IJWMT), Vol.15, No.4, pp. 31-50, 2025. DOI:10.5815/ijwmt.2025.04.03

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