Exploring BitTorrent peer distribution via hybrid PlanetLab-Internet measurement

Understanding the peer distribution over the global Internet is the key issue toward building new generation of ISP-friendly peer-to-peer systems. However, there are unfortunately significant scalability and representability challenges in measuring and understanding real-world peer distribution. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel hybrid measurement methodology that uses the PlanetLab as a distributed probing platform to interact with BitTorrent trackers and peers in the global Internet.