Paircoding: Improving File Sharing Using Sparse Network Codes

BitTorrent and Practical Network Coding are efficient methods for sharing files in a peer-to-peer network. Both face the problem to distribute a given file using peers with different and dynamic bandwidth and only temporal availability. For this, BitTorrent partitions the files and uses the upload and download of each peer. In addition to this, Practical Network Coding uses a random linear combination of the parts. The original file can be decoded by a matrix operation as soon as enough linear combinations have been gathered at a peer. It is known that Practical Network Coding optimizes the network flow in any peer-to-peer network, yet suffers from the cost of read/write disk operations for encoding and decoding. In this respect, BitTorrent is very efficient, yet falls behind because it has to face the coupon collector problem when distributing parts. We present Paircoding as an alternative which is regarding filesharing at least as good as BitTorrent and shares nearly the sam...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICIW
• Authors: Christian Ortolf, Christian Schindelhauer, Arne Vater
• Keywords: Coupon Collector Problem, ICIW 2009, Internet Technology, Peer-to-peer Network, Practical Network Coding