The emergence of peer-to-peer (P2P) systems has enabled rapid deployment of Internet-scale distributed applications over the Internet. This project focuses on cooperative peer-to-peer systems, in which peer nodes form a ""community of common interest"" with shared goals and mutual benefits. Services that can be supported by cooperative P2P systems cover the gamut of networked applications and distributed computing. Since the value and utility of a cooperative P2P system is in the service it offers to its users, ensuring its correct and efficient operation despite the existence of potentially untrustworthy nodes is of utmost importance.
The goal of this project is to understand and address the challenges and problems in building large-scale, robust cooperative P2P systems that are trustworthy, accountable and secure. The project includes developing implementations of several innovative concepts and mechanisms: efficient and correct ""Distributed Hash Table"" routing, randomly rotating ""witness"" nodes, and virtualized protocol evaluation.
