  In this work, using a game-theoretic approach, cost-sensitive mechanisms that
lead to reliable Internet-based computing are designed. In particular, we
consider Internet-based master-worker computations, where a master processor
assigns, across the Internet, a computational task to a set of potentially
untrusted worker processors and collects their responses. Workers may collude
in order to increase their benefit. Several game-theoretic models that capture
the nature of the problem are analyzed, and algorithmic mechanisms that, for
each given set of cost and system parameters, achieve high reliability are
designed. Additionally, two specific realistic system scenarios are studied.
These scenarios are a system of volunteer computing like SETI, and a company
that buys computing cycles from Internet computers and sells them to its
customers in the form of a task- computation service. Notably, under certain
conditions, non redundant allocation yields the best trade-off between cost and
reliability.
