Measurement and Analysis of BitTorrent Traffic in Mobile WiMAX Networks

As mobile Internet environments are becoming dominant, how to revamp P2P operations for mobile hosts is gaining more and more attention. In this paper, we carry out empirical traffic measurement of BitTorrent service in various settings (static, bus and subway) in commercial WiMAX networks. To this end, we analyze the connectivity among peers, the download throughput/stability, and the signaling overhead of mobile WiMAX hosts in comparison to a wired (Ethernet) host. We find out the drawbacks of BitTorrent operations in mobile Internet are characterized by lower connection ratio, unstable connections amongst peers, and higher control message overhead.