Modeling and Analysis of Bandwidth-Inhomogeneous Swarms in BitTorrent

—A number of analytical models exists that capture various properties of the BitTorrent protocol. However, until now virtually all of these models have been based on the assumption that the peers in the system have homogeneous bandwidths. As this is highly unrealistic in real swarms, these models have very limited applicability. Most of all, these models implicitly ignore BitTorrent’s most important property: peer selection based on the highest rate of reciprocity. As a result, these models are not suitable for understanding or predicting the properties of real BitTorrent networks. Furthermore, they are hardly of use in the design of realistic BitTorrent simulators and new P2P protocols. In this paper, we extend existing work by presenting a model of a swarm in BitTorrent where peers have arbitrary upload and download bandwidths. In our model we group peers with (roughly) the same bandwidth in classes, and then analyze the allocation of upload slots from peers in one class to peers...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: P2P
• Authors: Michel Meulpolder, Johan A. Pouwelse, Dick H. J. Epema, Henk J. Sips
• Keywords: BitTorrent Protocol, P2P 2009, Peer-to-Peer Computing, Real Bittorrent Networks, Realistic Bittorrent Simulators