WuKong: a practical video streaming service based on native BitTorrent and scalable video coding

Many researches on peer-to-peer video streaming have focused on dealing with highly dynamic, high-churn P2P environment. Most of P2P streaming protocols were modified from a P2P file sharing protocol. Inspired by the high performance on peer-to-peer file sharing of BitTorrent, we propose an overlaying streaming mechanism on the native BitTorrent protocol and realize a practical P2P video streaming service, called WuKong. WuKong not only takes advantages of BitTorrent but also combines the video scalability of layered video coding. In this paper, we depict an overlaid streaming mechanism in WuKong and an adaptive layer-downloading process to balance between the video quality and bandwidth utilization on heterogeneous peers. WuKong is carried out by using an open-sourced library of the BitTorrent protocol, coding schemes of the Windows Media Video (WMV), and the Scalable Video Coding (SVC). We measured and compared the service quality of end-users served by WuKong on heterogeneous peers. In addition, we evaluated the effectiveness of WuKong with peers that are randomly joining and leaving the P2P network. The results show that WuKong not only provides high quality P2P video streaming services but also supports different scaling abilities over heterogeneous devices.     

Towards efficient data distribution on computational desktop grids with BitTorrent

Datacentric applications are still a challenging issue for large-scale distributed computing systems. The emergence of new protocols and software for collaborative content distribution over the Internet offers a new opportunity for efficient and fast delivery of a high volume of data. This paper presents an evaluation of the BitTorrent protocol for computational desktop grids. We first present a prototype of a generic subsystem dedicated to data management and designed to serve as a building block for any desktop grid system. Based on this prototype we conduct experiments to evaluate the potential of BitTorrent compared to a classical approach based on FTP data server. The preliminary results obtained with a 65-node cluster measure the basic characteristics of BitTorrent in terms of latency and bandwidth and evaluate the scalability of BitTorrent for the delivery of large input files. Moreover, we show that BitTorrent has a considerable latency overhead compared to FTP but clearly outperforms FTP when distributing large files or files to a high number of nodes. Tests on a synthetic application show that BitTorrent significantly increases the communication/computation ratio of the applications eligible to run on a desktop grid system.     

Measurement,modeling and enhancement of BitTorrent-based VoD system

BitTorrent is one of the most popular Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications for file sharing over the Internet. Video files take up a large proportion of space among the BitTorrent shared files. Recently, BitTorrent has attracted researchers’ interests, as an alternative method of providing video on demand (VoD) service. In this paper, we concentrate on enabling BitTorrent to support VoD service in existing swarms while maintaining the download efficiency of file-sharing users. We first examine the content properties of the BitTorrent system to explore the demands and challenges of VoD service in BitTorrent swarms. The efficiency of BitTorrent for various piece selection policies is then compared through measurement on PlanetLab. We also use an optimization mathematical model to analyze the hybrid BitTorrent system in which downloading peers and streaming peers coexist. Both measurement results and model analysis indicate the problem of system efficiency decline in the BitTorrent-based VoD systems, in comparison with the original BitTorrent file-sharing system. Our proposed approach, unlike existing strategies that are limited to changing the piece selection policy to allow BitTorrent to support streaming services, modifies both piece and peer selection policies to provide a “streaming while downloading” service in the BitTorrent system with downloading peers. For the peer selection policy, a CAP (Closest-Ahead Peers) method is applied to make better use of the peers’ upload bandwidths. For the piece selection policy, a sliding window-based hybrid method that combines the rarest-first policy with the sequential policy is proposed. To demonstrate the performance of our proposed approach, an evaluation is made using various metrics on PlanetLab. The results show that our proposed method has higher throughput and better streaming continuity than the sequential policy and BiToS.     

BitTorrent协议中激励机制的设计与分析

激励机制是BitTorrent协议的重要组成部分,它鼓励用户上传以获得更快的下栽速度,并提高系统整体性能。原有BitTorrent激励机制存在大量的搭便车节点,极大影响了激励效果,因此提出了一种新的激励策略,并给出了具体的实施算法。对应用这种新激励机制的BitTorrent协议进行了详细的着色Petri网（colored Petri nets,CPN）形式化建模分析,在验证模型正确性的基础上,进行基于模型模拟的性能分析实验,结果表明该激励机制能够严格限制搭便车节点行为,达到更好的激励效果。     

Decentralized architecture for resource management of group-based distributed systems

As the development of hardware and software, large scale, flexible, distributed, secure and coordinated resource sharing has attracted much attention. One of the major challenges is to support distributed group-based resource management, e.g. interest-based organization, with resources/services classifiable. Although there have been some proposals to address this challenge, they share the same weakness of using either severs or super peers to keep global knowledge, and win good search efficiency at the expenses of the system scalability. As a result, such designs can not keep both the search efficiency and system scalability. To that end, this paper proposes a group-based distributed architecture. It organizes the nodes inside the groups by Chord protocol, a classical Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology and it defines new communication protocol for nodes among different groups but removes servers/super peers for group management. Such a design keeps the resource classifiable property together with good system performance. The main characteristics of this architecture are highlighted by its convenience for group activity analysis, promising scalability, high search efficiency, as well as robustness. The experimental performance results presented in the paper demonstrate the efficiency of the design.     

Twins: A Dual Addressing Space Representation for Self-Organizing Networks

As the size of mobile self-organizing networks increases, the efficiency of location services must increase as well so that addressing/routing scalability does not become an issue. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture, called Twins, tailored for self-organizing networks. Twins architecture involves addressing and locating nodes in large networks, forwarding packets between them, and managing in the presence of mobility/topology changes. Twins defines a logical multidimensional space for addressing and forwarding, while location service and management operations make use of a one-dimensional space. To improve scalability and performance, forwarding is hop-by-hop with greedy next-hop choice and the location service uses a rendezvous paradigm to distribute information among nodes. In this paper, we describe the Twins architecture and present a performance evaluation to assess scalability, fairness in the overhead distribution among nodes, and routing robustness.     

Hybrid fluid modeling approach for performance analysis of P2P live video streaming systems

In this paper a hybrid modeling approach with different modeling formalisms and solution methods is employed in order to analyze the performance of peer to peer live video streaming systems. We conjointly use queuing networks and Fluid Stochastic Petri Nets, developing several performance models to analyze the behavior of rather complex systems. The models account for: network topology, peer churn, scalability, peer average group size, peer upload bandwidth heterogeneity and video buffering, while introducing several features unconsidered in previous performance models, such as: admission control for lower contributing peers, control traffic overhead and internet traffic packet loss. Our analytical and simulation results disclose the optimum number of peers in a neighborhood, the minimum required server upload bandwidth, the optimal buffer size and the influence of control traffic overhead. The analysis reveals the existence of a performance switch-point (i.e. threshold) up to which system scaling is beneficial, whereas performance steeply decreases thereafter. Several degrees of degraded service are introduced to explore performance with arbitrary percentage of lost video frames and provide support for protocols that use scalable video coding techniques. We also find that implementation of admission control does not improve performance and may discourage new peers if waiting times for joining the system increase.     

Securing BitTorrent using a new reputation-based trust management system

Nowadays, BitTorrent as a means of sharing files has become highly popular among internet users. However, due to the open nature of BitTorrent protocol and lack of any security mechanism, number of attacks against BitTorrent has significantly increased. Sybil, Collusion, Lying-Piece, Fake-Block, and Chatty-Peer are attack types which have been considered in this paper to secure BitTorrent against them. These attacks can decrease the download performance of BitTorrent clients considerably. In this paper a new reputation based trust management system to cover aforementioned attack types is presented. The proposed approach calculates a local score at peers and a global score at the tracker for each peer. First, peers are sorted according to their cumulative score at the tracker and then top 10 % of these peers are used to determine other peers global score. These local and global scores are used to find attackers. In addition, a novel formula has been utilized to calculate peers local score. Using the global score concept makes our mechanism robust and swift to detect collusion attack which has not been considered in most of similar previous works. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system, several simulation and real experiments in the Emulab testbed were performed. The outcomes indicate that our method is highly effective in detection of rogue peers and Free-Riders; moreover, performance of honest peers has significantly improved.     

Performance analysis and improvement for BitTorrent‐like file sharing systems

In this paper, we present a simple mathematical model for studying the performance of the BitTorrent ( http://www.bittorrent.com ) file sharing system. We are especially interested in the distribution of peers in different states of the download job progress. With the model we find that the distribution of the download peers follows an asymmetric U‐shaped curve under the stable state, due to BitTorrent's unchoking strategies. In addition, we find that the seeds' departure rate and the download peers' abort rate will influence the peer distribution in different ways notably. We also analyze the content availability under the dying process of the BitTorrent file sharing system. We find that the system's stability deteriorates with decreasing and unevenly distributed online peers, and BitTorrent's built‐in ‘tit‐for‐tat’ unchoking strategy could not help to preserve the integrity of the file among the download peers. We propose an innovative ‘tit‐for‐tat’ unchoking strategy which enables more peers to finish the download job and prolongs the system's lifetime. By playing our innovative strategy, download peers could cooperate to improve the stability of the system by making a trade‐off between the current downloading rate and the future service availability. Finally, experimental results are presented to validate our analytical results and support our proposals. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

对等点播系统中节点搜索机制研究

对等点播系统(P2P-VoD)中的跳转操作需要高效的节点搜索,如何快速查找到“合适”的节点是个挑战.“合适”包含两方面因素:(1)内容匹配;(2)物理性能匹配.而传统的方法大部分只涉及对前者的研究.文中提出了一种层次化的搜索模型(简称Mediacoop),不仅可以让搜索到的节点在内容上满足要求,而且在物理性能上也能满足要求.具体而言,Mediacoop首先利用播放距离来索引全部节点,再利用延迟特征优选内容上已经符合要求的节点.在NS2模拟器上的实验表明,Mediacoop在用户体验和系统开销上均优于传统的方法.同时,在实际系统CoolFish中的部署和运行也验证了Mediacoop的实用性.     

Performance analysis of BitTorrent-like systems with heterogeneous users

Among all peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, BitTorrent seems to be the most prevalent one. This success has drawn a great deal of research interest on the system. In particular, there have been many lines of research studying its scalability, performance, efficiency, and fairness. However, despite the large body of work, there has been no attempt mathematically to model, in a heterogeneous (and hence realistic) environment, what is perhaps the most important performance metric from an end user’s point of view: the average file download delay.

In this paper we propose a mathematical model that accurately predicts the average file download delay in a heterogeneous BitTorrent-like system. Our model is quite general, has been derived with minimal assumptions, and requires minimal system information. Then, we propose a flexible token-based scheme for BitTorrent-like systems that can be used to tradeoff between overall system performance and fairness to high bandwidth users, by properly setting its parameters. We extend our mathematical model to predict the average file download delays in the token- based system, and demonstrate how this model can be used to decide on the scheme’s parameters that achieve a target performance/fairness.     

K网络节点标识符重复与别名现象测量

为方便P2P网络的内容投递,Kademlia协议作为一个鲁棒性强的分布式Hash表协议,被BitTorrent和eMule等P2P文件共享应用部署.在此,将这些被部署的基于Kademlia协议的网络称为K网络.K网络中每个节点拥有唯一的IP地址(或ID)是至关重要的,因为K网络中的"节点查询"和"资源搜索"都依赖于此.然而,据分析发现,K网络中相当一部分节点存在IP重复与ID别名.为深入理解IP重复与ID别名的分布特征,提出了几个度量IP重复与ID别名的测度.基于这些测度和Rainbow采集器,对K网络中的IP重复与ID别名进行了测量,发现了许多有助于P2P网络挖掘研究的IP重复与ID别名特征.     

Free-Riding on BitTorrent-Like Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems: Modeling Analysis and Improvement

BitTorrent has emerged as a very popular peer-to-peer file sharing system, which uses an embedded set of incentive mechanisms to encourage contribution and prevent free-riding. However, the capability BitTorrent has of preventing free-riding needs further study. In this paper, we present a fluid model with two different classes of peers to capture the effect of free-riding on BitTorrent-like systems. With the model, we find that BitTorrent's incentive mechanism is successful in preventing free-riding in a system without seeds, but may not succeed in producing a disincentive for free-riding in a system with a high number of seeds. The reason for this is that BitTorrent does not employ any effective mechanisms for seeds to effectively guard against freeriding. Therefore, we propose a seed bandwidth allocation strategy for the BitTorrent system to reduce the effect of seeds on free-riding. Finally, simulation results are given, which validate what we have found in our analysis and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.     

Modeling resource constrained BitTorrent proxies for energy efficient mobile content sharing

In this paper we present a solution that makes BitTorrent content transfer for mobile device more energy efficient. The main idea of the research is that instead of downloading the content via BitTorrent directly to the mobile phone, an intermediate proxy is used which sends the data to the phone in high speed bursts. This results in smaller energy footprint compared with regular BitTorrent data transfer. Furthermore, we focus on how the proxy can be hosted on memory limited broadband routers which are available in almost every home. We define an analytical model which can be used to analyze the memory allocation strategies of the proxy peers and predict how proxy peers influence the P2P community performance. We verify our model via simulations. We also present measurement results with real life torrents using our prototype system running on home routers and Symbian based mobile phones.     

Decentralized resource management for a distributed continuous media server

Distributed continuous media server (DCMS) architectures are proposed to minimize the communication-storage cost for those continuous media applications that serve a large number of geographically distributed clients. Typically, a DCMS is designed as a pure hierarchy (tree) of centralized continuous media servers. In an earlier work, we proposed a redundant hierarchical topology for DCMS networks, termed RedHi, which can potentially result in higher utilization and better reliability over pure hierarchy. We focus on the design of a resource management system for RedHi that can exploit the resources of its DCMS network to achieve these performance objectives. Our proposed resource management system is based on a fully decentralized approach to achieve optimal scalability and robustness. In general, the major drawback of a fully decentralized design is the increase in latency time and communication overhead to locate the requested object. However, as compared to the typically long duration and high resource/bandwidth requirements of continuous media objects, the extra latency and overhead of a decentralized resource management approach become negligible. Moreover, our resource management system collapses three management tasks: (1) object location, (2) path selection, and (3) resource reservation, into one fully decentralized object delivery mechanism, reducing the latency even further. In sum, decentralization of the resource management satisfies our scalability and robustness objectives, whereas collapsing the management tasks helps alleviate the latency and overhead constraints.     

基于DHT的P2P系统负载均衡的有效算法

基于DHT的P2P系统中,各种因素例如结点异构性和不同的文件访问率等,都可能会影响DHT系统的效率。本文提出一个基于DHT的P2P系统中有效的负载均衡算法。该算法提出一个全分布机制来维护文件访问的历史信息,用来预测未来文件访问频率。设计了一个新的负载均衡算法,当新结点加入时,历史信息和结点异构性一起用来决定最佳负载分配。在系统运行期间如果有过载结点出现也可动态执行负载重分配。该算法不使用虚服务器,减少了维护路由元数据的处理开销。     

Godson-T: An Efficient Many-Core Architecture for Parallel Program Executions

Moore’s law will grant computer architects ever more transistors for the foreseeable future, and the challenge is how to use them to deliver efficient performance and flexible programmability. We propose a many-core architecture, Godson-T, to attack this challenge. On the one hand, Godson-T features a region-based cache coherence protocol, asynchronous data transfer agents and hardware-supported synchronization mechanisms, to provide full potential for the high efficiency of the on-chip resource utilization. On the other hand, Godson-T features a highly efficient runtime system, a Pthreads-like programming model, and versatile parallel libraries, which make this many-core design flexibly programmable. This hardware/software cooperating design methodology bridges the high-end computing with mass programmers. Experimental evaluations are conducted on a cycle-accurate simulator of Godson-T. The results show that the proposed architecture has good scalability, fast synchronization, high computational efficiency, and flexible programmability.     

Scalable Grid‐wide capacity allocation with the SweGrid Accounting System (SGAS)

The SweGrid Accounting System (SGAS) allocates capacity in collaborative Grid environments by coordinating enforcement of Grid‐wide usage limits as a means to offer usage guarantees and prevent overuse. SGAS employs a credit‐based allocation model where Grid capacity is granted to projects via Grid‐wide quota allowances that can be spent across the Grid resources. The resources collectively enforce these allowances in a soft, real‐time manner. SGAS is built on service‐oriented principles with a strong focus on interoperability and Web services standards. This article covers the SGAS design and implementation, which, besides addressing inherent Grid challenges (scale, security, heterogeneity, decentralization), emphasizes generality and flexibility to produce a customizable system with lightweight integration into different middleware and scheduling system combinations. We focus the discussion around the system design, a flexible allocation model, middleware integration experiences and scalability improvements via a distributed virtual banking system, and finally, an extensive set of testbed experiments. The experiments evaluate the performance of SGAS in terms of response times, request throughput, overall system scalability, and its performance impact on the Globus Toolkit 4 job submission software. We conclude that, for all practical purposes, the quota enforcement overhead incurred by SGAS on job submissions is not a limiting factor for the job‐handling capacity of the job submission software. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flat and hierarchical epidemics in P2P systems: Energy cost models and analysis

In large scale distributed systems, epidemic or gossip-based communication mechanisms are preferred for their ease of deployment, simplicity, robustness against failures, load-balancing and limited resource usage. Although they have extensive applicability, there is no prior work on developing energy cost models for epidemic distributed mechanisms. In this study, we address power awareness features of two main groups of epidemics, namely flat and hierarchical. We propose a dominating-set based and power-aware hierarchical epidemic approach that eliminates a significant number of peers from gossiping. To the best of our knowledge, using a dominating set to build a hierarchy for epidemic communication and provide energy efficiency in P2P systems is a novel approach. We develop energy cost model formulations for flat and hierarchical epidemics. In contrast to the prior works, our study is the first one that proposes energy cost models for generic peers using epidemic communication, and examines the effect of protocol parameters to characterize energy consumption. As a case study protocol, we use our epidemic protocol ProFID for frequent items discovery in P2P systems. By means of extensive large scale simulations on PeerSim, we analyze the effect of protocol parameters on energy consumption, compare flat and hierarchical epidemic approaches for efficiency, scalability, and applicability as well as investigate their resilience under realistic churn.