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  • A More Intelligent Use of Seeding Capacity in BitTorrent
    Measurement studies have shown that real world BitTorrent (BT) systems have a high seed capacity. We provide analytical models that explicitly include the effect of seed capacity in the performance of the system. Our models indicate that while seed capacity can have a significant effect on BT performance, it is also easily exploitable by free-riders, and such free-riding clients exist out in the wild today. In this work, we propose simple and scalable approaches that make a more intelligent use of seed capacity by hurting free-riders without explicit identification while improving the performance of contributing nodes.

  • Multi-Torrent: a Simple BitTorrent Improvement
    BitTorrent (BT) has become an extremely popular and successful peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing system. Although empirical evidence suggests that most nodes participate in multiple torrents, surprisingly little research literature exists on this topic. In this work, we focus on a multi-torrent system, and specifically on the questions of (a) what incentives could be provided for nodes to contribute resources as seeds in a multi-torrent environment, and (b) what are the resulting performance consequences of such behavior, both on the nodes which are willing to be seeds and on the overall system. We give evidence of the current system lacking incentives for nodes to stay around as seeds in a multi-torrent environment. Motivated by that, we propose a cross torrent based method and then present a simulation-based performance study to illustrate the benefits of our approach.

  • On Multi-Tree-Based Streaming
    In this work, we develop and analyze a multi-tree-based scheme for streaming media in overlay networks. We provide tree construction algorithms that achieve perfect load balance and derive corresponding bounds on delay characteristics as well as buffer space requirements. For our scheme we show that the delay is optimal when the trees are either 2-ary or 3-ary. We also illustrate the performance characteristics of our schemes using simulation-based studies, and we extend our schemes to allow for node churn. Our main goal is to develop an understanding of playback delay and buffer requirements inherent in all such schemes.

  • Multi-path Streaming: Toward Picture-perfect Streaming on the Internet
    Quality of service (QoS) in streaming of continuous media (CM) over the Internet is poor, which is partly due to variations in delays, bandwidth limitations, and packet losses. Although CM applications can tolerate some missing data, non-recoverable information loss degrades these applications' QoS. Consequently, a number of application areas (e.g., those related to the entertainment industry) have backed away from streaming of their content over the Internet. Inability to control the resulting visual and auditory quality of the resulting streamed presentation is an important reason for such a trend. We believe that this trend can be reversed. To this end, our work focuses on providing high quality streaming through the exploitation of multiple paths existing in the network. By high quality, we mean with significant bandwidth requirements, of relatively long duration, and without information loss or hiccups in data delivery.


© alix - 2008