Improving QoS on Gnutella

The use of peer-to-peer systems for sharing information, files and other resources has risen dramatically over the last three years. File sharing is the ‘killer app’ that has driven this explosion in popularity. The first generation of peer-to-peer file sharing systems, including Napster, Morpheus and Kazaa, followed the traditional client-server paradigm. However, concerns over the legality and scalability of such systems has driven the development of entirely decentralized file sharing protocols, the most popular of these being Gnutella. To date, decentralized file sharing systems have been unable to compete with those based on a centralized architecture in terms of the QoS (quality of service) they offer to users. AGnuS improves QoS across the Gnutella network by increasing file availability, improving network friendliness, increasing file quality and improving file-acquisition time. These results are achieved by layering caching, load balancing, contentbased routing and file filtering services on top of the core Gnutella protocol. AGnuS is implemented using the base Gnutella protocol in order to maintain compatibility with the large number of existing Gnutella hosts. Our experimental results show significant QoS improvements when compared to a network of generic Gnutella hosts.