Application-Layer Traffic Analysis of a Peer-to-Peer System

Characterizing traffic behavior helps to optimize the network architecture for improved performance. Using a modified LimeWire servent (for both the server and client) and a variance-time plot for traffic characterization, the authors analyze the Gnutella protocol's traffic shape and find that the messages exhibit a self-similar shape. This result shows network designers that they need to consider the self-similar traffic shape in their set-up - for instance, by introducing appropriate buffer sizes.