Title: File sharing in cloud computing using win stay lose shift strategy

Authors: Yilei Wang; Willy Susilo; Tao Li; Qiuliang Xu

Addresses: School of Information and Electrical Engineering, Ludong University, China; Department of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University, China ' Centre for Computer and Information Security Research, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Wollongong, Australia ' School of Information and Electrical Engineering, Ludong University, China ' Department of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University, China

Abstract: Traditionally, users in clouds are assumed to be willing to store and share files in clouds, where the security and efficiency issues are discussed. However, few studies involve the incentives to share files in clouds. In this paper, we delve into users' incentives for using the cloud system to store and share their files towards the view of game theory. More specifically, the process of file sharing is reduced to an infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma (PD) game and the action of sharing files in clouds is considered as the action of cooperation in the infinitely repeated PD game. We incorporate win stay lose shift (WSLS) strategy into file sharing and simulate it compared with tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy in clouds. Simulation results show that WSLS is an optimal strategy for users to share their files in clouds. Furthermore, WSLS is robust for unintentional deviation and returns to mutual cooperation after deviation.

Keywords: file sharing; win stay lose shift strategy; WSLS; game theory; cloud computing; user incentives; prisoner's dilemma; mutual cooperation; simulation; unintentional deviation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHPCN.2015.070016

International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, 2015 Vol.8 No.2, pp.154 - 166

Received: 12 Jul 2014
Accepted: 10 Sep 2014
Published online: 24 Jun 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article