  Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology has been regarded as a promising way to help
Content Providers (CPs) cost-effectively distribute content. However, under the
traditional Internet pricing mechanism, the fact that most P2P traffic flows
among peers can dramatically decrease the profit of ISPs, who may take actions
against P2P and impede the progress of P2P technology. In this paper, we
develop a mathematical framework to analyze such economic issues. Inspired by
the idea from cooperative game theory, we propose a cooperative
profit-distribution model based on Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS), in which
eyeball ISPs and Peer-assisted CPs (PCPs) form two coalitions respectively and
then compute a fair Pareto point to determine profit distribution. Moreover, we
design a fair and feasible mechanism for profit distribution within each
coalition. We show that such a cooperative method not only guarantees the fair
profit distribution among network participators, but also helps to improve the
economic efficiency of the overall network system. To our knowledge, this is
the first work that systematically studies solutions for P2P caused unbalanced
profit distribution and gives a feasible cooperative method to increase and
fairly share profit.
