147783
Availability in BitTorrent Systems
In this paper, we investigate the problem of highly available, massive-scale file distribution in the Internet. To this end, we conduct a large-scale measurement study of BitTorrent, a popular class of systems that use swarms of actively downloading peers to assist each other in file distribution. The first generation of BitTorrent systems used a central tracker to enable coordination among peers, resulting in low availability due to the tracker's single point of failure. Our study analyzes the prevalence and impact of two recent trends to improve BitTorrent availability: (i) use of multiple trackers, and (ii) use of Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs), both of which also help to balance load better. The study considered more than 1,400 trackers and 24,000 DHT nodes (extracted from about 20,000 torrents) over a period of two months. We find that both trends improve availability, but for different and somewhat unexpected reasons. Our findings include: (i) multiple trackers improve availability, but the improvement largely comes from the choice of a single highly available tracker, (ii) such improvement is reduced by the presence of correlated failures, (iii) multiple trackers can significantly reduce the connectivity of the overlay formed by peers, (iv) the DHT improves information availability, but induces a higher response latency to peer queries.
13845864
On the interaction between overlay routing and underlay routing
In this paper, we study the interaction between overlay routing and traffic engineering (TE) in a single autonomous system (AS). We formulate this interaction as a two-player non-cooperative non-zero sum game, where the overlay tries to minimize the delay of its traffic and the TE's objective is to minimize network cost. We study a Nash routing game with best-reply dynamics, in which the overlay and TE have equal status, and take turns to compute their optimal strategies based on the response of the other player in the previous round. We prove the existence, uniqueness and global stability of Nash equilibrium point (NEP) for a simple network. For general networks, we show that the selfish behavior of an overlay can cause huge cost increases and oscillations to the whole network. Even worse, we have identified cases, both analytically and experimentally, where the overlay's cost increases as the Nash routing game proceeds even though the overlay plays optimally based on TE's routing at each round. Experiments are performed to verify our analysis.
6607794
Can an Overlay Compensate for a Careless Underlay?
We investigate the ability of an overlay network to compensate for “careless” routing in the native network layer, i.e., for network-layer routes not optimized for performance. We consider cost/traffic-dependent, overlay routing on top of an underlay routing based on randomly-generated, cost/traffic-independent link weights, and determine the extent to which overlay-overcareless-underlay can achieve performance close to that attainable when underlay routing is performed in an optimal cost/trafficdependent (“careful”) manner. We identify three graph-theoretic metrics that collectively characterize the richness of the underlay network: the tightness (characteristic path length, or CPL), the thickness (cut average) and the weighted sum of node degrees. We find that only when the underlay graph is rich can the overlay compensate for a careless underlay. If network links have linear costs, we prove that overlay cost is a linear increasing function of CPL under some assumptions. Finally, we investigate heuristics (based on the notion of richness) for choosing a set of overlay nodes of fixed size that is likely to result in good overlay performance.
1774011
TCP connection game: a study on the selfish behavior of TCP users
We present a game-theoretic study of the selfish behavior of TCP users when they are allowed to use multiple concurrent TCP connections so as to maximize their goodputs or other utility functions. We refer to this as the TCP connection game. A central question we ask is whether there is a Nash equilibrium in such a game, and if it exists, whether the network operates efficiently at such a Nash equilibrium. Combined with the well known PFTK TCP model (1998), we study this question for three utility functions that differ in how they capture user behavior. The bad news is that the loss of efficiency or price of anarchy can be arbitrarily large if users have no resource limitations and are not socially responsible. The good news is that, if either of these two factors is considered, efficiency loss is bounded. This may partly explain why there will be no congestion collapse if many users use multiple connections.
11427190
Exploiting the IPID Field to Infer Network Path and End-System Characteristics
In both active and passive network Internet measurements, the IP packet has a number of important header fields that have played key roles in past measurement efforts, e.g., IP source/destination address, protocol, TTL, port, and sequence number/acknowledgment. The 16-bit identification field (IPID) has only recently been studied to determine what information it might yield for network measurement and performance characterization purposes. We explore several new uses of the IPID field, including how it can be used to infer: (a) the amount of internal (local) traffic generated by a server; (b) the number of servers in a large-scale, load-balanced server complex and; (c) the difference between one-way delays of two machines to a target computer. We illustrate and validate the use of these techniques through empirical measurement studies.
1402660
On Unstructured File Sharing Networks
We study the interaction among users of unstructured file sharing applications, who compete for available network resources (link bandwidth or capacity) by opening multiple connections on multiple paths so as to accelerate data transfer. We model this interaction with an unstructured file sharing game. Users are players and their strategies are the numbers of sessions on available paths. We consider a general bandwidth sharing framework proposed by Kelly [1] and Mo and Walrand [2], with TCP as a special case. Furthermore, we incorporate the Tit-for-Tat strategy (adopted by BitTorrent [3] networks) into the unstructured file sharing game to model the competition in which a connection can be set up only when both users find this connection beneficial. We refer to this as an overlay formation game. We prove the existence of Nash equilibrium in several variants of both games, and quantify the losses of efficiency of Nash equilibria. We find that the loss of efficiency due to selfish behavior is still unbounded even when the Tit-for-Tat strategy is believed to prevent selfish behavior.
2491447
Unsupervised image segmentation using local homogeneity analysis
In this paper, a novel method is presented for unsupervised image segmentation based on local homogeneity analysis. First, a criterion for homogeneity of a certain pattern is proposed. Applying the criterion to local windows in the original image results in the "H-image". The high and low values of the H-image correspond to possible region boundaries and region interiors respectively. Then, a region growing method is used to segment the image based on the H-image. Finally, visually similar regions are merged together to avoid over-segmentation. Experimental results on real images show the effectiveness and robustness of the method.
39496103
An Application of Well-orderly Trees in Graph Drawing
Well-orderly tree is a powerful technique capable of deriving new results in graph encoding, graph enumeration and graph generation [3, 5]. In this paper, by using well-orderly trees, we prove that any plane graph G with n vertices has a visibility representation with height , which can be constructed in linear time. This improves the best previous bound of .
6317532
Multi-agent based peer-to-peer information retrieval systems with concurrent search sessions
In cooperative peer-to-peer information retrieval systems, each node can be considered an intelligent agent and these agents work collectively to provide an information retrieval service. In order to effectively support multiple and concurrent search sessions in the network, we propose two traffic engineering techniques that minimize processing and communication bottlenecks. One is a novel agent control mechanism whose elements include resource selection, local search scheduling, and feedback-based load control. The other is a new two-phase query routing algorithm based on organizational knowledge. Experimental results show that this framework can reduce congestion situations, increase system throughput, and improve considerably the overall system utility.
11721850
Estimating LOC for information systems from their conceptual data models
Effort and cost estimation is crucial in software management. Estimation of software size plays a key role in the estimation. Line of Code (LOC) is still a commonly used software size measure. Despite the fact that software sizing is well recognized as an important problem for more than two decades, there is still much problem in existing methods. Conceptual data model is widely used in the requirements analysis for information systems. It is also not difficult to construct conceptual data models in the early stage of developing information systems. Much characteristic of an information system is actually reflected from its conceptual data model. We explore into the use of conceptual data model for estimating LOC. This paper proposes a novel method for estimating LOC for an information system from its conceptual data model through the use of multiple linear regression model. We have validated the method through collecting samples from both the industry and open-source systems.
9323396
Inducing Word Alignments with Bilexical Synchronous Trees
This paper compares different bilexical tree-based models for bilingual alignment. EM training for the new model benefits from the dynamic programming "hook trick". The model produces improved dependency structure for both languages.