The Role of Membership Turnover in Reputation-Based Trust Systems for P2P Networks

Nowadays Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems cover a wide range of applications including: Grid Computing, Data Storage, File Sharing, Online Person-to-Person Auctions, Business-to-Business Services, and Supply Chain Management Networks. In 2004 Americans spent approximately $115 billion on online purchases, up over 25% from the previous year [1]. eBay alone posted 2004 revenues of $3.27 billion, in 2005 revenue of more than $4.55 billion, and in the last quarter of2006 more than $1.44 billion [2, 3]. P2P file sharing systems generate a major portion of the Internet traffic, and this portion is expected to increase in the future [4, 5]. There are many challenges in designing and implementing these systems. One of them is providing service security and trust to the system. Security and trust are inseparable. Trust is one of the biggest research areas in the P2P domain.