Method and system for reputation management in peer-to-peer networks

Methods to minimize the impact of malicious peers on the performance of a peer-to-peer system. The system computes a global trust value for a peer by calculating the left principal eigenvector of a matrix of normalized local trust values, thus taking into consideration the entire system's history with each single peer. Algorithms for performing such computations in a scalable and distributed manner are provided. Rewarding highly reputable peers with better quality of service encourages non-malicious peers to share more information and to self-police their own information.