Study and Bridging of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems

1 G. Portokalidis is also with Leiden University 2 E.P. Markatos and M. Marazakis are also with the University of Crete. Abstract—Peer-to-peer file sharing systems have become increasingly popular over the last few years, by attracting large numbers of Internet users, who share a continuously increasing volume of data. Since the launch of Napster, the first widely known peer-to-peer file sharing network, several other filesharing systems have emerged. These systems are based on various architectures, which usually reflect different sharing policies and communities. Although current peer-to-peer systems facilitate the sharing of content among their users, they do not facilitate the sharing of content among themselves. In this paper we study two of the most popular open-source peer-to-peer file sharing systems in order to understand (i) whether their traffic patterns are similar, and (ii) whether there would be any benefit in facilitating the sharing of content between the users of different peer-to-peer systems.