1. SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Analysing Bit Torrent Traffic :
A Geographic Insight
Xinghua He ( )
Eric Tang ( )
SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

2. Outline Introduction What is Bit Torrent ? How does BT work ?
Our project
What does our project encompass ?
How are we doing it ?
The results of the project
The analysis of the results
Future work
References
Questions

3. 1. Introduction What is Bit Torrent?
Peer-to-peer protocol for downloading files (especially large files)
compared to classic server-to-client topology.
Allows distribution of “popular” files without causing massive
bandwidth costs and overloading from source (
ek.com/what-is-bittorrent.htm).
Faster when more people involved.
Used widely for pirated material.

4. 1. Introduction How does it work?
Uses a special torrent metafile (contains information of the tracker
and hash verification of files) of the software/multimedia desired
by the client user.
Client contacts the tracker to register its “participation”.
Tracker responds with a list of peers sharing who are downloading
and/or uploading.
Handshakes and piece amount information are performed with
other peers.
Pieces exchange begins.
Periodically contacts the tracker.

5. 2. Our project What does our project encompass?
Analyse the geographic distribution of peers for various torrents;
Finding factors associating with the distribution of peers;
Comment on possible optimization techniques with geographic
distribution;

6. 2. Our project How are we doing it? Two torrent clients
(1 in Sydney, 1 in Miami) (eliminate geographic influence).
Downloading of Ubuntu Linux distro, popular american tv
show and popular Korean tv show.
Wireshark to sniff out source Ips.
IP ligence Geolocation Database.
Files removed after downloading.

7. 3. The results of the project (1)

8. 3. The results of the project (2)

9. 3. The results of the project (3)

10. 3. The results of the project (4)

11. 3. The results of the project (5)

12. 3. The results of the project (6)

13. 4. The analysis of results
Geographic distribution depends on the type of media being
shared.
Location of client does not influence the peer distribution.
The “popular” the torrent, the more peers within swarm.
Client list is random.
Popularity defined by the nature of the media itself
(i.e. TV ratings) and overall availability ratio.

14. 5. Future work Current debate over latency peer selection:
Latency vs AS based selection;
Optimal for small files (i.e game updates);
Optimal for high speed internet nations (i.e korea).
May be hard to implement new peer selection algorithm due to
protocol fragmentation.
More simulation and experiments are needed before deciding
on amending selective peering.

15. 6. References
Wikimedia Foundation Inc 2011, the United States, accessed 24
May 2011, <
May 2011,<
Raymond, LX, Jogesh, KM 2010,’A Survey Of BitTorrent
Performance’, IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS &
TUTORIALS, pp

16. 7. Questions