Decentralized Bootstrapping of P2P Systems: A Practical View

Authors:
Jochen Dinger;Oliver P. Waldhorst
Affiliations:
Institute of Telematics, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Karlsruhe, Germany 76128;Institute of Telematics, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Karlsruhe, Germany 76128
Venue:
NETWORKING '09 Proceedings of the 8th International IFIP-TC 6 Networking Conference
Year:
2009

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Abstract

So far, bootstrapping constitutes the only centralized task in otherwise decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) systems. As a contribution to the development of generally applicable decentralized bootstrap mechanisms, in this paper we analyze two decentralized approaches from a practical point of view. We consider local host caches and random address probing for bootstrapping into the BitTorrent DHT as an example for a widely deployed P2P system. Based on the results of an extensive measurement study we show that local host caches allow rejoining the P2P system quickly after short times of disconnection, but are impracticable for infrequent or first-time users. Furthermore, random address probing is feasible using a direct Internet connection with high bandwidth, but is subject to practical issues raised by typical NAT routers and the distribution of ports used by BitTorrent clients. We propose two mechanisms for increasing the performance of random address probing: (1) probing multiple ports per host and (2) hash-based filter-resistant port selection, making distributed bootstrapping feasible even from a practical point of view.