Peer-to-peer Networks and Internet Policies

Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are distributed systems consisting of interconnected nodes, able to self-organise into network topologies with the purpose of sharing resources such as content, CPU cycles, storage and bandwidth. Many of the largest IT companies including HP, Microsoft and IBM have invested considerable resources in such P2P applications. It has been proven as a most successful way to produce large scale, reliable, and cost-effective applications. The authors review several incentive mechanisms that have been proposed to stimulate co-operation towards achieving a resilient storage. Moreover, this book deals with a teaching course for network literacy. It includes the necessary skills for people to live in a networked information society. Also included in this book is information on P2P content distribution systems and infrastructures by identifying their non-functional properties, and determining the way in which these non-functional properties depend on, and are affected by various design features. Other chapters in this book present a Bayesian game to detect intruders in ad hoc networks, describe the quickly emerging social behaviour of online user-generated video, examine the phenomenon of internet addiction, and explore the process of quality e-development, a continuing professional training (CPT) which affects faculty learning.