iPTT: peer‐to‐peer push‐to‐talk for VoIP

This paper proposes iPTT, a peer‐to‐peer (P2P) Push‐to‐Talk (PTT) service for Voice over IP (VoIP). In iPTT, a distributed and mobile‐operator independent network architecture is presented to accelerate the deployment of the PTT service. Based on the serverless architecture, we develop two mechanisms, that is, flooding‐based floor control mechanism (FFC) and tree‐based floor control mechanism (TFC), for real‐time talk‐burst determination. The determination algorithms and the corresponding message flows for these two mechanisms are designed to show the feasibility of FFC and TFC. The performance of FFC and TFC is investigated through our analytical and simulation models in terms of the determination latency and the number of floor‐control message exchanges. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A location‐aware peer‐to‐peer overlay network

This work describes a novel location‐aware, self‐organizing, fault‐tolerant peer‐to‐peer (P2P) overlay network, referred to as Laptop. Network locality‐aware considerations are a very important metric for designing a P2P overlay network. Several network proximity schemes have been proposed to enhance the routing efficiency of existing DHT‐based overlay networks. However, these schemes have some drawbacks such as high overlay network and routing table maintenance overhead, or not being completely self‐organizing. As a result, they may result in poor scalability as the number of nodes in the system grows. Laptop constructs a location‐aware overlay network without pre‐determined landmarks and adopts a routing cache scheme to avoid maintaining the routing table periodically. In addition, Laptop significantly reduces the overlay maintenance overhead by making each node maintain only the connectivity between parent and itself. Mathematical analysis and simulations are conducted to evaluate the efficiency, scalability, and robustness of Laptop. Our mathematical analysis shows that the routing path length is bounded by log_d N, and the joining and leaving overhead is bounded by d log_d N, where N is the number of nodes in the system, and d is the maximum degree of each node on the overlay tree. Our simulation results show that the average latency stretch is 1.6 and the average routing path length is only about three in 10 000 Laptop nodes, and the maximum degree of a node is bounded by 32. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Data replication mechanisms in the peer‐to‐peer networks

Peer‐to‐peer (P2P) network is a distributed network in which nodes with similar capabilities exchange information with each other. Due to the nature of the P2P network distribution, numerous network message transformation is required to exchange the data between nodes over the network, which may increase access latency. Because of the high amount of the stored data in the P2P networks, the replication of data is very important. A large amount of data is handled using data replication to increase data access, reduce access latency, and increase data availability. This issue has an important role in the P2P networks, but there is no complete and systematic research in this field. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive study of data replication mechanisms in the P2P networks. The 1027 papers have been identified and have been reduced to 213 main studies using the paper selection process. Moreover, in this paper, the major advances are reviewed in four main groups (structured, unstructured, super‐peer, and hybrid networks), and the new challenges are also highlighted. Moreover, the open issues and guidelines for future studies are presented.     

Super peer selection strategy in peer‐to‐peer networks based on learning automata

A super peer is a peer that has the highest capacity in comparison with other peers in the network. It is trying to reduce the load of the rest of the peers and improve network performance. Selecting a super peer in a peer‐to‐peer–based network is a very crucial challenge. As the ability of peers are very different, by considering capacity of each peer and selecting a proper role, we can use network components much more efficiently. Because of the dynamicity of these networks, comparative methods of selecting super peers is of special importance. Comparative selection is continuously trying to select proper super peer. In recent studies, learning automata was introduced as a powerful learning model to solve this issue. In most of the studies, learning automata with an S model is employed. In this article, another selection method of learning automata with a P model environment is presented and its capability for super peer selection is shown. Moreover, simulation results show that removing some of the super peers would result in better performance in terms of inversion time in the high level of super‐peer capacity, required time for selecting proper super peer, and super peer tolerance.     

Distributed key management scheme for peer‐to‐peer live streaming services

Live media streaming over peer‐to‐peer (P2P) network structures is commonplace nowadays. However, with the large number of users in a typical P2P system, it is impractical to use the central server to process the key information update requests of all the users Accordingly, the present study proposes a distributed key management scheme in which the server is only required to transmit the key update information to a limited number of users. To further reduce the load on the server, the update information is distributed using a hop‐by‐hop approach. An effective method is proposed for protecting the key update information as it is propagated through the network. In addition, a technique is presented for ensuring the security of the certificates used in the system It is shown that the distributed key management scheme and authentication procedure ensure an efficient and secure P2P live streaming performance even in the event of high churn rates. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhancing quality of experience using peer‐to‐peer overlay on device‐to‐device communications

With the recent development of LTE‐A/5G technologies, data sharing among mobile devices offer an attractive opportunity to reduce Internet access. However, it requires smart strategies to share the data with low trade‐offs in time, cost, and energy. Several existing schemes offer a super‐peer‐based two‐tier model using a distributed hash table (DHT) organization for smart devices having device‐to‐device (D2D)/Bluetooth/WiFi capabilities. The primary focus of these schemes has been to reduce Internet usage by increased D2D content sharing. However, the real challenge is not in creating a two‐tier model, but evolving an efficient overlay that offers enhanced opportunities for D2D content sharing over the existing model. In this paper, we formulated a P‐median‐based selection of tier‐1 devices in a distribution network and solved it using the Lagrangian relaxation method. The tier‐2 devices become clients seeking content sharing services from tier‐1 devices. A strong motivation in this work is to raise a user's perception of the grade of service known as quality of experience (QoE). We analyzed the challenge for QoE assessment in resource‐constrained smartphones under the proposed model of enhanced D2D communication. Our focus is to establish a framework to evaluate QoE for applications and services over LTE‐A/5G networks with an improved D2D communication level. The simulation and the experimental results validate the claim that substantial improvements in QoE are possible with the proposed mathematical model for selecting and placing tier‐1 mobile devices and maintaining a DHT for D2D communication.     

Identifying peer‐to‐peer communities in the network by connection graph analysis

In this paper we present a unified solution to identify peer‐to‐peer (P2P) communities operating in the network. We propose an algorithm that is able to progressively discover nodes cooperating in a P2P network and to identify that P2P network. Starting from a single known node, we can easily identify other nodes in the P2P network, through the analysis of widely available and standardized IPFIX (NetFlow) data. Instead of relying on the analysis of content characteristics or packet properties, we monitor connections of known nodes in the network and then progressively discover other nodes through the analysis of their mutual contacts. We show that our method is able to discover cooperating nodes in many P2P networks and present the real computational requirements of the algorithm on a large network. The use of standardized input data allows for easy deployment onto real networks. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An immunological approach for file recovery over JXTA peer‐to‐peer framework

Peer‐to‐peer (P2P) file‐sharing systems are characterized by highly replicated content that is distributed among nodes with enormous aggregate resources for storage and communication. File consistency is often compromised by undesirable changes, which should be detected and corrected in a timely fashion. The artificial immune system (AIS) is a novel evolutionary paradigm inspired by aspects of the biological immune system (BIS), such as protection, decentralization, autonomy, and anomaly detection. The AIS paradigm suggests a wide variety of mechanisms for solving complex computer problems. In this paper, we propose the ImmunoJXTA framework for file consistency management and file recovery using the main aspects of AIS in P2P systems. We implemented ImmunoJXTA on the JXTA P2P framework to recover distributed inconsistent files between peers efficiently. Promising results are achieved from experimental runs of the proposed framework. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A distributed utility‐based scheduling for peer‐to‐peer video streaming over wireless networks

Interactive multimedia applications such as peer‐to‐peer (P2P) video services over the Internet have gained increasing popularity during the past few years. However, the adopted Internet‐based P2P overlay network architecture hides the underlying network topology, assuming that channel quality is always in perfect condition. Because of the time‐varying nature of wireless channels, this hardly meets the user‐perceived video quality requirement when used in wireless environments. Considering the tightly coupled relationship between P2P overlay networks and the underlying networks, we propose a distributed utility‐based scheduling algorithm on the basis of a quality‐driven cross‐layer design framework to jointly optimize the parameters of different network layers to achieve highly improved video quality for P2P video streaming services in wireless networks. In this paper, the quality‐driven P2P scheduling algorithm is formulated into a distributed utility‐based distortion‐delay optimization problem, where the expected video distortion is minimized under the constraint of a given packet playback deadline to select the optimal combination of system parameters residing in different network layers. Specifically, encoding behaviors, network congestion, Automatic Repeat Request/Query (ARQ), and modulation and coding are jointly considered. Then, we provide the algorithmic solution to the formulated problem. The distributed optimization running on each peer node adopted in the proposed scheduling algorithm greatly reduces the computational intensity. Extensive experimental results also demonstrate 4–14 dB quality enhancement in terms of peak signal‐to‐noise ratio by using the proposed scheduling algorithm. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A distributed adaptive landmark clustering algorithm based on mOverlay and learning automata for topology mismatch problem in unstructured peer‐to‐peer networks

Peer‐to‐peer networks are overlay networks that are built on top of communication networks that are called underlay networks. In these networks, peers are unaware of the underlying networks, so the peers choose their neighbors without considering the underlay positions, and therefore, the resultant overlay network may have mismatches with its underlying network, causing redundant end‐to‐end delay. Landmark clustering algorithms, such as mOverlay , are used to solve topology mismatch problem. In the mOverlay algorithm, the overlay network is formed by clusters in which each cluster has a landmark peer. One of the drawbacks of mOverlay is that the selected landmark peer for each cluster is fixed during the operation of the network. Because of the dynamic nature of peer‐to‐peer networks, using a non‐adaptive landmark selection algorithm may not be appropriate. In this paper, an adaptive landmark clustering algorithm obtained from the combination of mOverlay and learning automata is proposed. Learning automata are used to adaptively select appropriate landmark peers for the clusters in such a way that the total communication delay will be minimized. Simulation results have shown that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing algorithms with respect to communication delay and average round‐trip time between peers within clusters. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Replication schemes for peer‐to‐peer content in wireless mesh networks with infrastructure support

Many mobile devices (e.g., smart phones, PDAs, portable computers) and wireless routers (e.g., WiFi access points) nowadays are equipped with ad hoc transmission mode. In a dense environment such as a college/office campus, this creates the possibility of forming a wireless mesh network (WMN) in which mobile users communicate with each other through multiple wireless hops. This allows mobile users to exchange (share) files over the free access WMN rather than a carrier frequency such as 3G and WiMax. We consider a peer‐to‐peer (P2P) content sharing setting in a WMN, wherein the mesh network operator over‐provision a number of mesh routers in the network with additional storage capacity and P2P‐aware devices that are programmed to cache and store P2P content. Those mesh routers act as caches and participants in P2P content sharing. The aim of this setting is to both reduce the cost of communications between peers within the WMN (i.e., reduce bandwidth and energy that P2P traffic consumes in the network), and enhance the performance of P2P content sharing (i.e., reduce the average P2P content download delay). Our main contribution in this paper is an optimum P2P content replication strategy at the participating mesh routers. In particular, we determine the optimum number of replicas for every P2P file such that the average access cost of all files in the network is minimized. We propose a centralized algorithm that enables the participating mesh routers to implement the optimal strategy. We further propose a distributed (low cost) algorithm for P2P content replication at the participating mesh routers, and show that the distributed algorithm mimics the optimal strategy very well. The analytical and simulation results show that our replication strategy significantly reduces the average overall cost of accessing P2P files in the WMN as compared with other commonly used replication strategies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A survey and comparison on overlay‐underlay mapping techniques in peer‐to‐peer overlay networks

Peer‐to‐peer (P2P) overlay networks were developed initially for file sharing such as Napster and Gnutella; but later, they have become popular for content sharing, media streaming, telephony applications, etc. Underlay‐unawareness in P2P systems can result in suboptimal peer selection for overlay routing and hence poor performance. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the research work carried out to solve the overlay‐underlay mapping problems up till now. The majority of underlay‐aware proposals for peer selection focus on finding the shortest overlay routes by selecting nearest nodes according to proximity information. Another class of approaches is based on passive or active probing for provision of underlay information to P2P applications. Some other optimizations propose use of P2P middleware to extract, process, and refine underlay information and provide it to P2P overlay applications. Another class of approaches strive to use ISPs or third parties to provide underlay information to P2P overlay applications according to their requirements. We have made a state‐of‐the‐art review and comparison for addressing the overlay‐underlay mismatch in terms of their operation, merits, limitations, and future directions.     

X‐Region: A framework for location privacy preservation in mobile peer‐to‐peer networks

While enjoying various LBS (location‐based services), users also face the threats of location privacy disclosure. This is because even if the communications between users and LBS providers can be encrypted and anonymized, the sensitive information inside LBS queries may disclose the exact location or even the identity of a user. The existing research on location privacy preservation in mobile peer‐to‐peer (P2P) networks assumed that users trust each other and directly share location information with each other. Nonetheless, this assumption is not practical for most of the mobile P2P scenarios, for example, an adversary can pretend to be a normal user and collect the locations of other users. Aiming at this issue, this paper presents x‐region as a solution to preserve the location privacy in a mobile P2P environment where no trust relationships are assumed amongst mobile users. The main idea is to allow users to share a blurred region known as x‐region instead of their exact locations so that one cannot distinguish any user from others inside the region. We propose a theoretical metric for measuring the anonymity property of x‐region, together with three algorithms for generating an x‐region, namely, benchmark algorithm, weighted expanding algorithm, and aggressive weighted expanding algorithm. These algorithms achieve the anonymity and QoS requirements with different strategies. Our experiments verify the performance of the algorithms against three key metrics. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A self‐adaptive algorithm for super‐peer selection considering the mobility of peers in cognitive mobile peer‐to‐peer networks

Cognitive peer‐to‐peer networks are obtained from a combination of cognitive networking concepts and peer‐to‐peer networks. These networks are able to improve their performance while operating under dynamic and unknown environments. A cognitive peer‐to‐peer network tries to learn an appropriate configuration for itself considering the unknown physical properties of peers. Cognitive mobile peer‐to‐peer networks refer to cognitive peer‐to‐peer networks which are built over mobile ad hoc networks. In these networks, heterogeneity of the mobility of peers and resource limitation in wireless networks create challenges for network management algorithms. Because of the dynamicity of these networks, the management algorithms should be designated in self‐adaptive manner. In one type of these networks, some peers, called super‐peers, undertake to perform network managerial tasks. The mobility of peers leads to connection failure among peers and reselection of new super‐peers. Therefore, the selection of super‐peers, due to their influential role, requires an algorithm that considers the peers' mobility. Up to now, no self‐adaptive algorithm has been designated for super‐peer selection considering the mobility of peers in a self‐adaptive manner. This paper proposes M‐SSBLA, a self‐adaptive algorithm for super‐peer selection considering the mobility of peers based on learning automata. The proposed algorithm is obtained from cooperation between a learning automata‐based cognitive engine and MIS. MIS is a well‐known super‐peer selection algorithm in mobile peer‐to‐peer networks. We compared the proposed algorithm with recently reported algorithms, especially for a network with high mobility. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can cover maximum ordinary‐peer with a few super‐peer and improve robustness against super‐peer failures while decreasing maintenance overhead.     

A group strategy‐proof incentive approach for eliminating selfish behaviors in peer‐to‐peer file allocation

In this paper, we formulate and solve the selfish allocation problem by using game theory, which is different from the previously studied researches in three ways that make it more accurately reflective of real world peer‐to‐peer (P2P) allocation: (i) we treat the nodes as strategic agents and treat the replica allocation as a deliberate auction where node is incentivized to give his true quality of service for obtaining the replica; (ii) our mechanism computes node utility for all possible replica destination and payments for those destination nodes, and the best appropriate node can be selected as the final placement destination; and (iii) we show how to carry out our scheme with a distributed algorithm that is a straightforward extension to P2P allocation method and causes an overhead in convergence time. Our design and analysis of a strategy proof, feasible, Vickrey–Clarke–Groves‐based auction scheme provides a new, promising direction in distributed algorithmic mechanism design, which has heretofore been focused mainly on P2P application. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive video protection in large scale peer‐to‐peer video streaming over mobile wireless mesh networks

Because video streaming over mobile handheld devices has been of great interest, the necessity of introducing new methods with low implementation cost and scalable infrastructures is a strong demand of the service. In particular, these requirements are present in popular wireless networks such as wireless mesh networks (WMN). Peer‐to‐peer (P2P) networks promise an efficient scalable network infrastructure for video streaming over wired and wireless networks. Limited resources of the peers in P2P networks and high error rate in wireless channels make it more challenging to run P2P streaming applications over WMNs. Therefore, it is necessary to design efficient and improved error protection methods in P2P video streaming applications over WMNs. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive unequal video protection method specially intended for large scale P2P video streaming over mobile WMNs. Using this method, different frames have different priorities in receivers along the recovery process. Moreover, we precisely and completely evaluate different aspects related to frame protection in these networks using five important performance metrics including video distortion, late arrival distortion, end‐to‐end delay, overhead and initial start‐up delay. The results obtained from a precise simulation in OMNeT++ show that the proposed adaptive method significantly outperforms other solutions by providing better video quality on mobile wireless nodes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Extending P2PMesh: topology‐aware schemes for efficient peer‐to‐peer data sharing in wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising technology that provides low‐cost broadband access to the Internet for fixed and mobile wireless end users. An orthogonal evolution in computer networking has been the rise of peer‐to‐peer (P2P) applications such as P2P data sharing. It is of interest to enable effective P2P data sharing in this type of networks. Conventional P2P data sharing systems are not cognizant of the underlying network topology and therefore suffer from inefficiency. We argue for dual‐layer mesh network architecture with support from wireless mesh routers for P2P applications. The main contribution of this paper is P2PMesh: a topology‐aware system that provides combined architecture and efficient schemes for enabling efficient P2P data sharing in WMNs. The P2PMesh architecture utilizes three schemes: (i) an efficient content lookup that mitigates traffic load imbalance at mesh routers; (ii) an efficient establishment of download paths; and (iii) a data transfer protocol for multi‐hop wireless networks with limited capacity. We note here that the path establishment and data transfer schemes are specific to P2P traffic and that other traffic would use routes determined by the default routing protocol in the WMN. Simulation results suggest that P2PMesh has the potential to improve the performance of P2P applications in a wireless multi‐hop setting; specifically, we focused on data sharing, but other P2P applications can also be supported by this approach. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Peer‐to‐peer cooperation for GPS positioning

This paper presents a peer‐to‐peer cooperative positioning technique together with its performance assessment. The cooperation between the two GPS receivers is realized by means of a wireless LAN connection and is significantly influenced by the accurateness of the synchronization between the two terminals. Both the outdoor‐to‐indoor and outdoor‐to‐outdoor scenarios are considered. For each scenario, we assess the satellite signal acquisition and its computational load and the performance in terms of position accuracy and time‐to‐first‐fix of the positioning procedure. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using topology information for quality‐aware Peer‐to‐Peer multilayer video streaming

Due to increasing bandwidth capacities, the Internet has become a viable transport medium for a (live) video. Often, delivery of video streams relies on the client–server paradigm and therefore exhibits limited scalability. The Peer‐to‐Peer (P2P) network model is an attractive and scalable candidate to stream video content to end users. However, these P2P frameworks typically operate in a network agnostic mode. Introducing network topology information into these P2P frameworks offers opportunities to enhance the performance. In this paper, we introduce a model to include network information when streaming a (multilayered) video in P2P frameworks. An important metric for video stream providers is the content quality perceived by end users. The optimization studied here aims at maximizing the number of users receiving a high quality video. The paper addresses the optimization problem seen from the stream provider's viewpoint, having access to network topology information. An exact optimization approach is presented for benchmarking purposes and a heuristic approach to cope with realistic network sizes. In addition, we present an approach to decide the deployment location of peering functionality. The results show that our strategy significantly decreases the fraction of destinations receiving only the base layer, and by introducing extra peering functionality, network capacities are used more efficiently. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An improved algorithm for multicast topology discovery from end‐to‐end measurements

We present a new multicast topology inference algorithm called binary loss tree classification with hop count (HBLT). HBLT improves the previous algorithm of binary loss tree classification (BLT) not only in time complexity but also in misclassification probability and inference accuracy. The time complexity of HBLT is O(l²) instead of O(l³) required by BLT in the worst case, and O(l · log l) instead of O(l³) by BLT in the expected case, where l is the number of receivers in the multicast network. The misclassification probability of HBLT decreases more quickly than that of BLT as the number of probe packets increases. For correct classification, the inference accuracy of HBLT is always 1, i.e. the inferred tree is identical to the physical tree, whereas that of BLT is dependent on the shape of the physical tree and inversely proportional to the number of internal nodes with single child. We also show through simulation that HBLT requires fewer probe packets to infer the correct topology and hence has a lower misclassification probability and higher inference accuracy than BLT. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.