Abstract

The BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing network is currently one of the dominant Internet applications. Understanding the characteristics of BitTorrent through real-world measurements is key to improve the quality of service for tens of millions of BitTorrent users, but the complexity and scale of BitTorrent make a single, complete measurement impractical. Thus, an increasing number of real measurements have employed diverse sampling techniques to study the BitTorrent network. However, there is no study that investigates the accuracy of the findings of the different measurement techniques used in practice. To address this gap, in this work we propose a thorough investigation of the accuracy of BitTorrent measurement techniques. To this end, we first introduce a taxonomy of inaccuracy sources. We then investigate the effect of these sources using 15 long-term BitTorrent datasets collected from 9 BitTorrent communities between 2004 and 2009. We find that most reported measurements are based on techniques that can lead to inaccurate characterization of system properties.

Citations