Simulation and Optimization of the Gnutella Protocol

The project that I presented for Boom 2001 was titled Simulation and

Optimization of the Gnutella Protocol. A short description:

With centralized file sharing coming under a lot of flak and the Napster

community being decreased as a result of this, there have been a lot of

alternatives. One of these is peer to peer sharing, which means that I

can share files from neighboring users, instead of a centralized server

arbitrating my requests. Of course, this results in all the anonymity

that I need plus it makes difficult for any organization to track the

usage of certain kinds of information, thus lending the user more

freedom. This approach however is not without problems, since now, each

machine needs to keep track of which group it is in , in other words

establish a weak group membership.

The project looked at the Gnutella protocol, one such peer to peer

sharing idea, and simulated the protocol using the Ns2 network simulator

developed at USC and maintained at UCB. Needless to say, there were some

scalability problems that appeared, which were fixed and the underlying

protocol was enhanced, to perform slightly better than the original. The

results of simulation proved to be favorable, thus setting the scene for

creating a real world application. Unfortunately due to time constraints

and the fact that the project was developed as part of a class, the

application could not be created. The idea is still on..

Avneesh Bhatnagar