Sporadic decentralized resource maintenance for P2P distributed storage networks

In this paper, we propose a novel decentralized resource maintenance strategy for peer-to-peer (P2P) distributed storage networks. Our strategy relies on the Wuala overlay network architecture, (The WUALA Project). While the latter is based, for the resource distribution among peers, on the use of erasure codes, e.g., Reed-Solomon codes, here we investigate the system behavior when a simple randomized network coding strategy is applied. We propose to replace the Wuala regular and centralized strategy for resource maintenance with a decentralized strategy, where users regenerate new fragments sporadically, namely every time a resource is retrieved. Both strategies are analyzed, analytically and through simulations, in the presence of either erasure and network coding. It will be shown that the novel sporadic maintenance strategy, when used with randomized network coding, leads to a fully decentralized solution with management complexity much lower than common centralized solutions.