BitTorrent i kommersiella system
Identifiering av incitament och användarbeteenden
BitTorrentPeer-To-PeerP2PIncentivesCommercializationBitTorrentPeer-To-PeerP2PIncitamentKommersialisering
Companies that sell digital products such as software and movies transfer large amounts of data to its customers. In order to send this amount of data using FTP or HTTP and still maintain a high speed transfer rate it is required that the company have a large number of servers and a huge bandwidth. Servers and bandwidth costs money which means they have great costs on the distribution of their products. In order to reduce distribution costs, P2P technology can be used and the most powerful technology to transmit popular files is called BitTorrent.BitTorrent requires users to share their bandwidth. Nowadays, BitTorrent is frequently used to transfer products that are free of charge; one example is the Linux distribution Ubuntu. In these BitTorrent systems different incentives exist to motivate the users to share their bandwidth. If a company uses BitTorrent to save money and put the distribution cost on their customers, does the customers motivation to share their bandwidth disappear?To give the reader a clear picture of the subject, literature on how BitTorrent works and its different concepts have been acquired and processed. In addition to literature, a survey has been carried out in which BitTorrent users were asked about their willingness to share their bandwidth and what motivates them most in a possible commercial BitTorrent system.The result of this study shows that a marked increase in the propensity to share bandwidth appears as additional incentives are implemented to a BitTorrent system. These incentives may be of financial or functional value. Economic incentives proved to be the most requested implementation.