@InProceedings{bharambe06a,
  author =	 {Ashwin Bharambe and Cormac Herley and Venkat
                  Padmanabhan},
  title =	 {Analyzing and Improving a BitTorrent Network's
                  Performance Mechanisms},
  booktitle =	 {{INFOCOM}},
  year =	 2006,
  abstract =	 {In recent years, BitTorrent has emerged as a very
                  scalable peer-to-peer file distribution
                  mechanism. While early measurement and analytical
                  studies have verified BitTorrent’s performance, they
                  have also raised questions about various metrics
                  (upload utilization, fairness, etc.), particularly
                  in settings other than those measured. In this
                  paper, we present a simulationbased study of
                  BitTorrent. Our goal is to deconstruct the system
                  and evaluate the impact of its core mechanisms, both
                  individually and in combination, on overall system
                  performance under a variety of workloads. Our
                  evaluation focuses on several important metrics,
                  including peer link utilization, file download time,
                  and fairness amongst peers in terms of volume of
                  content served. Our results confirm that BitTorrent
                  performs near-optimally in terms of uplink bandwidth
                  utilization, and download time except under certain
                  extreme conditions. We also show that low bandwidth
                  peers can download more than they upload to the
                  network when high bandwidth peers are present. We
                  find that the rate-based tit-for-tat policy is not
                  effective in preventing unfairness. We show how
                  simple changes to the tracker and a stricter,
                  block-based tit-for-tat policy, greatly improves
                  fairness.},
  url = 	 {http://jmvidal.cse.sc.edu/library/bharambe06a.pdf},
  cluster = 	 {6679395373194672297}
}