14 research outputs found
Small Is Not Always Beautiful
Peer-to-peer content distribution systems have been enjoying great
popularity, and are now gaining momentum as a means of disseminating video
streams over the Internet. In many of these protocols, including the popular
BitTorrent, content is split into mostly fixed-size pieces, allowing a client
to download data from many peers simultaneously. This makes piece size
potentially critical for performance. However, previous research efforts have
largely overlooked this parameter, opting to focus on others instead. This
paper presents the results of real experiments with varying piece sizes on a
controlled BitTorrent testbed. We demonstrate that this parameter is indeed
critical, as it determines the degree of parallelism in the system, and we
investigate optimal piece sizes for distributing small and large content. We
also pinpoint a related design trade-off, and explain how BitTorrent's choice
of dividing pieces into subpieces attempts to address it
Swarming Overlay Construction Strategies
Swarming peer-to-peer systems play an increasingly instrumental role in
Internet content distribution. It is therefore important to better understand
how these systems behave in practice. Recent research efforts have looked at
various protocol parameters and have measured how they affect system
performance and robustness. However, the importance of the strategy based on
which peers establish connections has been largely overlooked. This work
utilizes extensive simulations to examine the default overlay construction
strategy in BitTorrent systems. Based on the results, we identify a critical
parameter, the maximum allowable number of outgoing connections at each peer,
and evaluate its impact on the robustness of the generated overlay. We find
that there is no single optimal value for this parameter using the default
strategy. We then propose an alternative strategy that allows certain new peer
connection requests to replace existing connections. Further experiments with
the new strategy demonstrate that it outperforms the default one for all
considered metrics by creating an overlay more robust to churn. Additionally,
our proposed strategy exhibits optimal behavior for a well-defined value of the
maximum number of outgoing connections, thereby removing the need to set this
parameter in an ad-hoc manner
Clustering and Sharing Incentives in BitTorrent Systems
Peer-to-peer protocols play an increasingly instrumental role in Internet content distribution. Consequently, it is important to gain a full understanding of how these protocols behave in practice and how their parameters impact overall performance. We present the first experimental investigation of the peer selection strategy of the popular BitTorrent protocol in an instrumented private torrent. By observing the decisions of more than 40 nodes, we validate three BitTorrent properties that, though widely believed to hold, have not been demonstrated experimentally. These include the clustering of similar-bandwidth peers, the effectiveness of BitTorrent's sharing incentives, and the peers' high average upload utilization. In addition, our results show that BitTorrent's new choking algorithm in seed state provides uniform service to all peers, and that an underprovisioned initial seed leads to the absence of peer clustering and less effective sharing incentives. Based on our observations, we provide guidelines for seed provisioning by content providers, and discuss a tracker protocol extension that addresses an identified limitation of the protocol
Swarming Overlay Construction Strategies
International audienceSwarming peer-to-peer systems play an increasingly instrumental role in Internet content distribution. It is therefore important to better understand how these systems behave in practice. Recent research efforts have looked at various protocol parameters and have measured how they affect system performance and robustness. However, the importance of the strategy based on which peers establish connections has been largely overlooked. This work utilizes extensive simulations to examine the default overlay construction strategy in BitTorrent systems. Based on the results, we identify a critical parameter, the maximum allowable number of outgoing connections at each peer, and evaluate its impact on the robustness of the generated overlay. We find that there is no single optimal value for this parameter using the default strategy. We then propose an alternative strategy that allows certain new peer connection requests to replace existing connections. Further experiments with the new strategy demonstrate that it outperforms the default one for all considered metrics by creating an overlay more robust to churn. Additionally, our proposed strategy exhibits optimal behavior for a well-defined value of the maximum number of outgoing connections, thereby removing the need to set this parameter in an ad-hoc manner
Clustering and Sharing Incentives in BitTorrent Systems
Peer-to-peer protocols play an increasingly instrumental role in Internet
content distribution. Consequently, it is important to gain a full
understanding of how these protocols behave in practice and how their
parameters impact overall performance. We present the first experimental
investigation of the peer selection strategy of the popular BitTorrent protocol
in an instrumented private torrent. By observing the decisions of more than 40
nodes, we validate three BitTorrent properties that, though widely believed to
hold, have not been demonstrated experimentally. These include the clustering
of similar-bandwidth peers, the effectiveness of BitTorrent's sharing
incentives, and the peers' high average upload utilization. In addition, our
results show that BitTorrent's new choking algorithm in seed state provides
uniform service to all peers, and that an underprovisioned initial seed leads
to the absence of peer clustering and less effective sharing incentives. Based
on our observations, we provide guidelines for seed provisioning by content
providers, and discuss a tracker protocol extension that addresses an
identified limitation of the protocol
Exploiting BitTorrent for Fun (But Not Profit)
This paper assesses BitTorrent's robustness against selfish peers, who try to download more than their fair share by abusing existing protocol mechanisms. We design and implement three selfish-peer exploits and evaluate their effectiveness on public and private torrents. In practice, BitTorrent appears quite robust against this kind of exploit: selfish peers can sometimes obtain more bandwidth, and honest peers' download rates suffer slightly in consequence, but we observe no considerable degradation of the system's quality of service. We identify private-torrent scenarios in which a selfish peer could benefit more significantly at the expense of honest peers, and discuss the BitTorrent protocol mechanisms that lead to robustness by rendering these scenarios infeasible