Managing Trust in a Peer-2-Peer Information System：（管理信任Peer-2-Peer信息系统）.pdfVIP

Managing Trust in a Peer-2-Peer Information System Karl Ab erer, Zoran Desp otovic Department of Communication Systems Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland fkarl.ab erer, zoran.desp otovic g@ep .ch Abstract Managing trust is a problem of particular imp ortance in p eer-to-p eer environments as one encounters frequently unknown agents. Existing metho ds for trust management based on reputation do however not scale as they rely on some form of central database or global knowledge to b e maintained at each agent. In this pap er we illustrate that the problem needs to b e addressed at b oth the data management and the semantic, i.e. trust management, level and we devise a metho d of how trust assessments can b e p erformed by using at b oth levels scalable p eer-to-p eer mechanisms. We exp ect that such metho ds are an imp ortant factor if fully decentralized p eer-to-p eer systems should b ecome the platform for more serious applications than simple le exchange. Keywords. trust management, reputation, p eer-to-p eer information systems, de- centralized databases. BRIDGE pap er. 1 Intro duction Over the last years, mainly due to the arrival of new p ossibilities for doing business elec- tronically, p eople started to recognize the imp ortance of trust management in electronic communities. Visitors at usually lo ok for customer reviews b efore deciding to buy new b o oks. Participants at eBays auctions can rate each other after each transaction. But b oth examples use completely centralized mechanisms for storing and explori