A comparison of bilateral and multilateral exchanges for peer-assisted content distribution

Peer-assisted content distribution matches user demand for content with available supply at other peers in the network. Inspired by this supply-and-demand interpretation of the nature of content sharing, we employ price theory to study peer-assisted content distribution. In this approach, the market-clearing prices are those which exactly align supply and demand, and the system is studied through the characterization of price equilibria. We rigorously analyze the efficiency and robustness gains that are enabled by price-based multilateral exchange. We show that multilateral exchanges satisfy several desirable efficiency and robustness properties that bilateral exchanges do not, e.g., equilibria in bilateral exchange may fail to exist, be inefficient if they do exist, and fail to remain robust to collusive deviations even if they are Pareto efficient. Further, we show that an equilibrium in bilateral exchange corresponds to a multilateral exchange equilibrium if and only if it is robust to deviations by coalitions of users.