Stochastic analysis of file-swarming systems

File swarming (or file sharing) is one of the most important applications in P2P networks. In this paper, we propose a stochastic framework to analyze a file swarming system under realistic setting: constraints in upload/download capacity, collaboration among peers and incentive for chunk exchange. We first extend the results in the coupon system [18] by providing a tighter performance bound. Then we generalize the coupon system by considering peers with limited upload and download capacity. We illustrate the last-piece problem and show the effectiveness of using forward error-correction (FEC) code and/or multiple requests to improve the performance. Lastly, we propose a framework to analyze an incentive-based file swarming system. The stochastic framework we propose can serve as a basis for other researchers to analyze and design more advanced features of file swarming systems.