IPv6 Peer Availability in BitTorrent Distributed Hash Table

P2P protocols are responsible for a large amount of the Internet traffic. Given that in such systems each node functions both as a client and as a server, peer connectivity is an important element that influences the overall system performance. The introduction of IPv6 solves a part of the NAT traversal connectivity problems that IPv4 had, and allows a larger number of peers to be connectable from the Internet. Moreover, it introduces built-in IPsec capabilities, lowering the overhead security features bring on the network stack. This places P2P systems in an area that would most benefit from IPv6 deployment. Considering that P2P systems mostly rely of the resources provided by each user, the information collected by measuring such systems offers a real image on the hardware and Internet connection available to the home users. For many years BitTorrent has been the P2P protocol with the largest contribution to the P2P traffic in the Internet. This paper analyses one of the peer discovery methods available in BitTorrent, DHT, and compares the number of IPv4 and IPv6 node addresses that are available in the DHT system. The paper results are based on an experiment that measured the largest public swarms available on the file-sharing community called The Pirate Bay.