GRep: A General Reputation Model For Peer-to-Peer Network

Peer-to-Peer Network (P2P Network) is becoming increasingly popularand has been applied to more and more areas since the end of last century.However, P2P network is faced with many security problems, ranging fromrouting work to data protection. Most of these problems are different fromthose in Client/Server based network and are regarded to be moretroublesome.The problem this thesis discussed exists in the context of application ofP2P network. Due to the mechanism of P2P network, nodes usually do nothave faith in each other in communication. In order to improve this situation,reputation system is introduced into P2P network. By collecting and sharinginformation about nodes' behavior, reputation system can set up the conceptof trust among nodes.Reputation model is the core of Reputation system. Much work has beendone around this area and some reputation models or systems are invented.However, these research work is too some extent independent, which makescomparisons and further study in this area not so easy. Therefore, this thesistries to make a systemic study of how to design a reputation system byanalyzing the essence of it and list major designing points. This thesis alsocompares some classic models or systems to support our analysis.GRep model is introduced at the latter part of this thesis. GRep inheritsstrong points of similar systems, with several new ideas to deal with sometough problems. The basic designing principle of GRep is general-used,simple and robust. GRep attains these goals with the abilities to withstandmore attacks and to be used in different environments. We believe GRep is ofdecent value for future reference in the study of this area.