Abstract
BitTorrent is one of the most successful peer-to-peer systems. Researchers have studied a number of aspects of the system, including its scalability, performance, efficiency and fairness. However, the complexity of the system has forced most prior analytical work to make a number of simplifying assumptions, for example, user homogeneity, or even ignore some central aspects of the protocol altogether, for example, the rate-based Tit-for-Tat (TFT) unchoking scheme, in order to keep the analysis tractable.
Motivated by this, in this article we propose two analytical models that accurately predict the performance of the system while considering the central details of the BitTorrent protocol. Our first model is a steady-state one, in the sense that it is valid during periods of time where the number of users remains fixed. Freed by the complications of user time-dynamics, we account for many of the central details of the BitTorrent protocol and accurately predict a number of performance metrics. Our second model combines prior work on fluid models with our first model to capture the transient behavior as new users join or old users leave, while modelling many major aspects of BitTorrent. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first model that attempts to capture the transient behavior of many classes of heterogeneous users. Finally, we use our analytical methodology to introduce and study the performance of a flexible token-based scheme for BitTorrent, show how this scheme can be used to block freeriders and tradeoff between higher-bandwidth and lower-bandwidth users performance, and evaluate the scheme's parameters that achieve a target operational point.
Supplemental Material
Available for Download
Supplemental movie, appendix, image and software files for, Modeling BitTorrent-like systems with many classes of users
- Al-Hamra, A., Liogkas, N., Legout, A., and Barakat, C. 2009. Swarming overlay construction strategies. In Proceedings of International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bharambe, A., Herley, C., and Padmanabhan, V. 2006. Analyzing and improving bittorrent performance. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM.Google Scholar
- BigChampagne. 2006. BigChampagne media measurement. http://www.bigchampagne.com.Google Scholar
- Bin, F., Chiu, D.-M., and Lui, J. C. 2006. The delicate tradeoffs in bittorrent-like file sharing protocol design. In Proceedings of International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP). Google ScholarDigital Library
- BitTornado. 2012. http://www.bittornado.com/.Google Scholar
- BitTorrent. 2008. BitTorrent protocol specification. http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html.Google Scholar
- BitTorrent Simulator. 2005. Microsoft Research simulator for the BitTorrent protocol. http://research. microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/20d68689-9a8d-44c0-80cd-66dfa4b0504b/.Google Scholar
- Chow, A. L., Golubchik, L., and Misra, V. 2009. Bittorrent: An extensible heterogeneous model. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM.Google Scholar
- Clevenot, F., Nain, P., and Ross, K. 2005. Multiclass p2p networks: Static resource allocation for service differentiation and bandwidth diversity. In Proceedings of IFIP WG 7.3 PERFORMANCE.Google Scholar
- Cohen, B. 2003. Incentives build robustness in bittorrent. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Economics of Peer-to-Peer Systems.Google Scholar
- Fan, B., Chiu, D.-M., and Lui, J. 2006. Stochastic differential equation approach to model bittorrent-like file sharing systems. In Proceedings of 14th IEEE International Workshop on Quality of Service.Google Scholar
- Fan, B., Lui, J. C. S., and Chiu, D.-M. 2009. The design trade-offs of bittorrent-like file sharing protocols. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 17, 2, 365--376. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Gaeta, R., Gribaudo, M., Manini, D., and Sereno, M. 2006. Analysis of resource transfers in peer-to-peer file sharing applications using fluid models. Perf. Eval. 63, 3, 149--174. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Guo, L., Chen, S., Xiao, Z., Tan, E., Ding, X., and Zhang, X. 2005. Measurements, analysis, and modeling of bittorrent-like systems. In Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Guo, L., Chen, S., Xiao, Z., Tan, E., Ding, X., and Zhang, X. 2007. A performance study of bittorrent-like peer-to-peer systems. IEEE J. Select. Areas Comm. 25, 1, 155--169. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hales, D. and Patarin, S. 2005. How to cheat bittorrent and why nobody does. Tech. rep. UBLCS-2005-12, University of Bologna, Italy.Google Scholar
- Izal, M., Keller, G., Biersack, E., Felber, P., Hamra, A., and Erice, L. 2004. Dissecting bittorrent: Five months in a torrent's lifetime. In Proceedings of Passive and Active Measurements.Google Scholar
- Legout, A., Liogkas, N., Kohler, E., and Zhang, L. 2007. Clustering and sharing incentives in bittorrent systems. In Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Liao, W.-C., Papadopoulos, F., and Psounis, K. 2006a. An efficient algorithm for resource sharing in peer-to-peer networks. In Proceedings of IFIP-TC6 NETWORKING. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Liao, W.-C., Papadopoulos, F., and Psounis, K. 2006b. A peer-to-peer cooperation enhancement scheme and its performance analysis. J. Comm. 1, 7, 24--35.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Liao, W.-C., Papadopoulos, F., and Psounis, K. 2007a. Performance analysis of bittorrent-like systems in heterogeneous networks. Tech. rep. CENG-2007-2, University of Southern California.Google Scholar
- Liao, W.-C., Papadopoulos, F., and Psounis, K. 2007b. Performance analysis of bittorrent-like systems with heterogeneous users. In Proceedings of IFIP WG 7.3 PERFORMANCE.Google Scholar
- Liogkas, N., Nelson, R., Kohler, E., and Zhang, L. 2006. Exploiting bittorrent for fun (but not profit). In Proceedings of IPTPS.Google Scholar
- Lo Piccolo, F. and Neglia, G. 2004. The effect of heterogeneous link capacities in bittorrent-like file sharing systems. In Proceedings of Hot-P2P. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nephelae. 2012. Nephelae cloud computing cluster. http://grid.ucy.ac.cy/Nephelae/.Google Scholar
- Parker, A. 2004. The true picture of peer-to-peer filesharing. http://www.cachelogic.com/.Google Scholar
- Piatek, M., Isdal, T., Anderson, T., Krishnamurthy, A., and Venkataramani, A. 2007. Do incentives build robustness in Bittorrent? In Proceedings of NSDI. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pouwelse, J., Garbacki, P., Epema, D., and Sips, H. 2005. The bittorrent P2P file-sharing system: Measurements and analysis. In Proceedings of IPTPS. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Qiu, D. and Srikant, R. 2004. Modeling and performance analysis of bittorrent-like peer-to-peer networks. In Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Rao, A., Legout, A., and Dabbous., W. 2010. Can realistic bittorrent experiments be performed on clusters? In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P).Google Scholar
- Ren, S., Tan, E., Luo, T., Chen, S., Guo, L., and Zhang, X. 2010. TopBT: A topology-aware and infrastructure-independent bittorrent client. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Saroiu, S., Gummadi, K. P., Dunn, R. J., Gribble, S., and Levy, H. M. 2002. An analysis of internet content delivery systems. In Proceedings of OSDI. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Sherman, A., Nieh, J., and Stein, C. 2009. Fairtorrent: Bringing fairness to peer-to-peer systems. In Proceedings of CoNEXT. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Sirivianos, M., Park, J. H., Chen, R., and Yang, X. 2007. Free-riding in bittorrent networks with the large view exploit. In Proceedings of IPTPS.Google Scholar
- Thommes, R. and Coates, M. 2005. Bittorrent fairness: Analysis and improvements. In Proceedings of the Workshop of Internet, Telecommunications and Signal Processing.Google Scholar
- Tian, Y., Wu, D., and Ng, K. 2006. Modeling, analysis and improvement for bittorrent-like file sharing networks. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM.Google Scholar
- TorrentFreak. 2009. BitTorrent still king of P2P traffic. http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-still-king-of-p2p-traffic-090218/.Google Scholar
- Wang, J., Yeo, C., Prabhakaran, V., and Ramchandran, K. 2007. On the role of helpers in peer-to-peer file download systems: Design, analysis, and simulation. In Proceedings of IPTPS.Google Scholar
- Wolfram Mathematica. http://www.wolfram.com/.Google Scholar
- Yang, X. and Veciana, G. D. 2004. Service capacity of peer to peer networks. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Modeling BitTorrent-like systems with many classes of users
Recommendations
Free-Riding on BitTorrent-Like Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems: Modeling Analysis and Improvement
BitTorrent has emerged as a very popular peer-to-peer file sharing system, which uses an embedded set of incentive mechanisms to encourage contribution and prevent free-riding. However, the capability BitTorrent has of preventing free-riding needs ...
Bandwidth trading in BitTorrent-like P2P networks for content distribution
Bandwidth trading schemes give peers an incentive to provide upload bandwidth to other peers in a P2P network for fast file distribution. A popular example is the tit-for-tat strategy used in the BitTorrent protocol. Although this game theoretical ...
Locality-awareness in BitTorrent-like P2P applications
Special section on communities and media computingThis paper presents the measurement study of locality-aware P2P solutions over real-world Internet autonomous systems (AS) topology. By using the accesses of nodes of PlanetLab testbed, we create a detailed AS-level map including the end-to-end path of ...
Comments