Abstract

BitTorrent is an attractive peer-to-peer technology that attempts to reduce load on file sharers by allowing downloaders to share content between themselves. BitTorrent's current focus is to provide users with a fast download, which requires the file sharer to serve a disproportionate amount of the file. We present a modification to the BitTorrent seeding algorithm that reduces the load on BitTorrent file sharers. Essentially, if a block of a file is already available from a significant number of peers, the file sharer refuses to share that block, forcing peers to get it from each other. Using this modification, we show that there is a trade-off between the server's expended upload bandwidth and a longer peer download time. We also show some cases where we reduce the server's load as well as maintain a competitive peer download time by increasing the availability of rare blocks.

Degree

College and Department

Physical and Mathematical Sciences; Computer Science

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/