sP2P: Symbiotic P2P - 1/3
Resolving the conflict between ISPs and BitTorrent through mutual cooperation
(Doctoral student seminar at Washington University in St. Louis)
Abstract: Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications are omnipresent on the internet today. These applications are primarily used for content delivery (e.g. BitTorrent), telephony, and video. There has been substantial research on the performance of the BitTorrent, but more recently BitTorrent has become a source of much controversy. BitTorrent achieves high download rates and robustness using random peer selection, which is oblivious to the underlying network topology. Thus, BitTorrent often routes traffic along network links that are costly to ISPs. As a result, ISPs have turned to installing network devices to detect and throttle BitTorrent traffic, and BitTorrent in turn has begun obfuscating its traffic to avoid ISP-detection. These actions only perpetuate a "cat and mouse" game between ISPs and BitTorrent developers. Their core objectives, maintaining profit margins (ISPs) and improving performance (BitTorrent), are irreconcilable without explicit cooperation. Therefore, we propose a network-aware BitTorrent extension, Symbiotic P2P (sP2P), which reduces network utilization without degrading client performance by augmenting the BitTorrent protocol with information provided by ISPs. Specifically, ISPs provide intelligent network devices that inform BitTorrent about additional local peers and the cost of the underlying network. Using this information, BitTorrent favors peers on less expensive network paths.