Exploring the robustness of BitTorrent peer-to-peer content distribution systems: Research Articles

  • Authors:
  • Nikitas Liogkas;Robert Nelson;Eddie Kohler;Lixia Zhang

  • Affiliations:
  • University of California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.;University of California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.;University of California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.;University of California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.

  • Venue:
  • Concurrency and Computation: Practice & Experience - Recent Advances in Peer-to-Peer Systems and Security (P2P 2006)
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

This paper assesses BitTorrent's robustness against selfish peers who try to download content faster than their fair share by abusing existing protocol mechanisms. We present three exploits that can deliver potential benefits to a selfish peer and evaluate their impact on both public and private download sessions. Our results show that BitTorrent is quite robust against these exploits. Although selfish peers can sometimes attain high download throughput and compliant peers' download rates suffer slightly in consequence, we observe no significant degradation of the overall system's quality of service. We identify scenarios where a selfish peer could attain significant benefits at the expense of compliant peers, and discuss the protocol characteristics that render these scenarios unlikely and hence lead to the system's robustness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. A shorter version of this work appeared at IPTPS'06 [1]