SUMMARY OF INCENTIVES BUILD ROBUSTNESS IN BITTORRENT (BRAM COHEN)
Summary of Incentives Build Robustness in
BitTorrent
Nhat Le-R11436908
Abstract—In the paper, the author argued that the BitTorrent file distribution system using tit-for-tat achieves a higher level of
robustness and resource utilization than any currently known cooperative approach.I will describe the BitTorrent technique and its
mechanism mentioned in the paper.
Index Terms—BitTorrent, Choking Algorithm
F
1 I NTRODUCTION
T HE authors focused on BitTorrent which is solving the
issue that reducing the cost placed on the hosting ma-
chine to make a file available for all downloaders. BitTorrent
technique posted a solution to connect and transfer pieces
between peers. It also provides a strategy to perform tracker
and make peer’s download rate be proportional to their
upload rate.
1.1 Method
1.1.1 BitTorrent Deployment
In the paper, to start a BitTorrent deployment,the .torrent file
which contains information about the file, its length, name,
and hashing information, and the url of a tracker is needed
to put on ordinary server. To publish a file, a seed known as
a downloader who has complete file, must be started. Next,
how downloaders find each other as well as define which
peer contains the piece in need? Trackers are the solution
to help peer find each other as well as provide the list of
contact information for peers which are downloading the
same piece.
Fig. 1. How bitTorrent works
1.1.2 Peer Distribution and Selection Rule
In general, to keep track of contents of peers, BitTorrent
splice files in to small pieces of a fixed size, a quarter
1
megabyte. The SHA1 hashes included in the torrent file
are responsible for data integrity. Peers keeps download
pieces they need from the others, the Choking Algorithm
is mentioned later as a method to disallow downloading
from peers.
1.1.3 Peer Selection
To begin with, BitTorrent has strict priority stated that
once a single sub-piece has been requested, the remaining
sub-pieces from that piece are requested before sub-pieces
from any other pieces, resulting in a good performance in
download pieces quickly. Next, rarest first rule is deployed
when selecting piece to download, peers download pieces
which they have fewest first. Therefore, the technique makes
sure peers get all the pieces they need as well as common
pieces are left for later. Furthermore, random first piece and
endgame mode also mentioned in the paper.
1.1.4 Choking Algorithm
In the system, peers can cooperate by uploading or not
cooperate by choking. Choking is refered as a temporary
refusal to upload, it means that peer stops uploading but
still can download. Technically, each peer always does not
choke a number of time of other peers, the default number
is four, peers recalculate who they want to choke once every
10 seconds to avoid wasting resource in case choking and
unchoking peers rapidly. Peers also has a single ’optimistic
unchoke’ which rotated every 30 seconds.
2 C ONCLUSION
The authors clearly showed that BitTorrent advantages in
practice. With the current huge deployments,BitTorrent is
proof that it is solving the problem of making files available
for all downloader. BitTorrent reduce the upload cost for
hosting machine, it also becomes a higher level of robust-
ness and resource utilization method comparing with other
current technique.
R EFERENCES
[1] Bram Cohen. Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent, May 22
2003