Analysis of the File Distribution Time in Peer-to-Peer Network

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems are responsible for a significant part of the Internettraffic today. File sharing is perhaps the most popular application among P2P applications. Incomparison with traditional Client/Server file distribution, P2P file sharing has some advantages,namely, scalability, bandwidth and others. In this paper we study the minimum distribution timefor getting the entire file by all of the users in the system, who need this file. This parameter isclosely associated with the mentioned bandwidth. The expression for the minimum distributiontime uses fluid-flow arguments and includes such terms as the file size, the upload rates of theseeds and the upload and download rates of the leechers. Using numerical examples and theexpression for the minimum distribution time, we show the efficiency of P2P file sharing. Weconsider the system behaviour, when there are two types of leechers in the system. These typesdiffer from each other by their upload bandwidths.