Simulating Peer-to-peer Applications

Research in peer-to-peer systems has been and is one of the main focus of our group. Several works we have done in the past have been based on experiments carried out with an event-based simulator of P2P protocols and algorithms, with a strong accent on the BitTorrent protocol. Browsing the literature, we found a P2P simulator that fit our needs: GPS, a general purpose peer-to-peer simulator.

The original developer of GPS has a project page, that can be found [here].

We extended and fixed GPS version 1.2 and we are now releasing GPS3.0, which features:

• Several bug fixes to the BitTorrent implementation
• An enhanced network level model which enables the introduction of uplink, downlink and network bottlenecks, the last being very useful when simulating ISP throttling of P2P traffic
• An implementation of the BitTyrant protocol
• An implementation of the new version of the mainline BitTorrent client
• An implementation of BitMax
• An implementation of the SmartSeed protocol
• An implementation of Proportional Fair Scheduling

Project Members

• Damiano Carra, Ass. Prof., University of Verona [link]
• Nikos Laoutaris, Telefonica Research [link]
• Flavio Esposito, PhD Student Boston University [link]
• Pietro Michiardi, Ass. Prof., Eurecom [link]

Contact: Assistant Prof. Pietro Michiardi
Institut Eurecom, 2229, route des Cretes,
BP 193, F-06560 Sophia-Antipolis (FRANCE)
Tel: +33.(0)4.93.00.81.45
FAX: +33.(0)4.93.00.82.00
email: Pietro dot Michiardi at eurecom.fr

Supported Protocols:

Despite being a "general purpose" P2P simulator, we have been working mainly on BitTorrent-like protocols.

If you wish a detaield description of the BitTorrent protocol, BitTyrant, BitMax, and PFS you can refer to the following links:

• The official BitTorrent protocol specification:: Wiki Theory [link], BitTorrent.org [link], WikiPedia [link]
• Understanding BitTorrent, a paper that describes the main technicalities behind BitTorrent:: [link]
• The official BitTyrant page:: [link]

References:

• Esposito, Flavio; Matta,Ibrahim; Michiardi, Pietro; Nobuyuki, Mitsutake; Carra, Damiano
  Seed scheduling for peer-to-peer networks
  NCA09, 8th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications, July 9-11, 2009, Cambridge, MA USA

• Laoutaris, Nikolaos;Carra, Damiano;Michiardi, Pietro
  Uplink allocation beyond choke/unchoke or how to divide and conquer best
  CoNEXT 2008, 4th ACM International Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies, December 9, 2008, Madrid, Spain

• Carra, Damiano;Neglia, Giovanni;Michiardi, Pietro
  On the impact of greedy strategies in BitTorrent networks : the case of BitTyrant
  P2P 2008, 8th IEEE International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing, RWTH Aachen University, September 8-11, 2008

• Smaragdakis, Georgios;Laoutaris, Nikolaos;Michiardi, Pietro;Bestavros, Azer Byers,John W;Roussopoulos, Mema
  Swarming on optimized graphs for n-way broadcast
  INFOCOM 2008, The 27th IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, April 13-18, 2008, Phoenix, USA

• Michiardi, Pietro;Ramachandran, Krishna; Sikdar, Biplap
  Modeling seed scheduling strategies in BitTorrent
  Networking 2007, 6th IFIP international conference on Networking, May 14 -18, 2007, Atlanta, USA

Downloads:

Original version of GPSv1.2:: [link]

GPSv3.0:: [link] [NOTE: we're cleaning up the code and comments, this link will be activated as soon as possible]

Last updated: Nov. 25th, 2009