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Dissecting BitTorrent: Five Months in a Torrent’s Lifetime

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Passive and Active Network Measurement (PAM 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 3015))

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Abstract

Popular content such as software updates is requested by a large number of users. Traditionally, to satisfy a large number of requests, lager server farms or mirroring are used, both of which are expensive. An inexpensive alternative are peer-to-peer based replication systems, where users who retrieve the file, act simultaneously as clients and servers. In this paper, we study BitTorrent, a new and already very popular peer-to-peer application that allows distribution of very large contents to a large set of hosts. Our analysis of BitTorrent is based on measurements collected on a five months long period that involved thousands of peers. We assess the performance of the algorithms used in BitTorrent through several metrics. Our conclusions indicate that BitTorrent is a realistic and inexpensive alternative to the classical server-based content distribution.

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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Izal, M., Urvoy-Keller, G., Biersack, E.W., Felber, P.A., Al Hamra, A., Garcés-Erice, L. (2004). Dissecting BitTorrent: Five Months in a Torrent’s Lifetime. In: Barakat, C., Pratt, I. (eds) Passive and Active Network Measurement. PAM 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3015. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24668-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24668-8_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-21492-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24668-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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