Economics of a Collaborative Peer-to- Peer Infrastructure for Content Distribution

Abstracl Distributing digiwl media contents to a large number of users in a cost-effective manner is a challenging task for the content provider. Traditionally, the content provider either deploys a set of high capaciry servers or contracts a content delivery network (CDN) to transport contents to users. The first approach requires a significant investment to set up and administer the servers. While in the second approach the CON charges the provider for every megabyte served. For large fi les such as movies, both approaches burden the budget of the content provider. For instance, the limited deployabil-ity of video on demand services may be attributed, in part, to the cost factor. Motivated by the success of the peer-lO-peer (P2P) paradigm in the last few years and by the immense number of the often underutilized end systems con· nected to the Internet. we propose a collaborative P2P infrastructure for cost-effective content distribution. The objectives of this position paper are: (1) To highlight the economic potential of a content distribution system built on lOp of a P2P infrastructure, and (2) To identify the key research problems that need to be addressed in order to realize this economic potential.