Content availability and bundling in swarming systems

BitTorrent, the immensely popular file swarming system, suffers a fundamental problem: content unavailability. Although swarming scales well to tolerate flash crowds for popular content, it is less useful for unpopular content as peers arriving after the initial rush find the content unavailable. Our primary contribution is a model to quantify content availability in swarming systems. We use the model to analyze the availability and the performance implications of bundling, a strategy commonly adopted by many BitTorrent publishers today. We find that even a limited amount of bundling exponentially reduces content unavailability. Surprisingly, for swarms with highly unavailable publishers, the availability gain of bundling can result in a net improvement in download time, i.e., peers obtain more content in less time. We empirically confirm the model's conclusions through experiments on PlanetLab using the mainline BitTorrent client. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.4 [Performa...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CONEXT
• Authors: Daniel Sadoc Menasché, Antonio Augusto de Aragão Rocha, Bin Li, Donald F. Towsley, Arun Venkataramani
• Keywords: Computer Networks, CONEXT 2009, Content Unavailability, File Swarming System, Swarming