BitTorrent or BitCrunch: Evidence of a credit squeeze in BitTorrent?

This research was conducted by the Tribler P2P research team to understand private trackers. By understanding private trackers operations we might be able to duplicate such performance enhancers into public swarms. Key aspect is removing the central tracker and enabling scalability to millions of peers.

Paper Abstract

BitTorrent is a highly popular peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol. Much BitTorrent activity takes place within private virtual communities called Private Trackers- a server that allows only community members to share files. Many private trackers implement ratio enforcement where the tracker monitors the upload and download behaviour of peers. If a peer downloads substantially more than it uploads then service is terminated. Tracker policies related to credit effect the performance of the community as a whole. We identify the possibility of a credit squeezein which performance is reduced due to lack of credit for some peers. We consider statistics from a popular private tracker and results from a simple model (called "Bit-Crunch").

View the entire 6-page scientific paper

View presentation made at COPS09 workshop on 29/06/09

This paper has been accepted for publication at COPS09, Groningen, The Netherlands.