Worse. Systems are more likely to have an always-on connection than they were ten years ago, but the amount of upstream bandwidth has not increased proportiona

Worse. Systems are more likely to have an always-on connection than they were ten years ago, but the amount of upstream bandwidth has not increased proportional to the amount of data that users wish to store. Integrity checking and replication will eat you alive. The best place for you to start is the following paper from 2003 (check CiteSeer): High Availability, Scalable Storage, Dynamic Peer Networks: Pick Two If you can't figure out a way to get around the problems outlined in this paper then do not waste your time. A built-in incentive/payment system is not going to solve the problems you think it will and is really the start of another "and now you have two problems" koan. Trust me on this one...