Performance evaluation of Xunlei peer-to-peer network: A measurement study

Xunlei is a P2P file sharing application that is popular in China. The performance of previous P2P applications is limited by the selfishness of peers and the widely use of firewall. Xunlei applies implicit uploading strategy and firewall bypassing technologies to conquer above drawbacks. To evaluate the effects of above solutions, we perform a series of measurements on Xunlei and BitTorrent networks. Our study provides three new findings by comparing the situation in the two networks. (1)Compared with the free control strategy in BitTorrent, the implicit uploading strategy improves not only the number of active peers but also the seed ratio. Benefit from the strategy, Xunlei has much better downloading performance in our measurement. (2)The strategy extends the seed service time that is related to swarm lifespan. According to our result, Xunlei swarm lives longer than BitTorrent one. (3)The connectivity influences the performance greatly. The result of our measurement shows that only 5% peers can be connected directly. Our theoretical analysis and measurement results show that better connectivity also leads to higher downloading speed and longer lifespan.