Underlay awareness in P2P systems: Techniques and challenges

Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications have recently attracted a large number of Internet users. Traditional P2P systems however, suffer from inefficiency due to lack of information from the underlay, i.e. the physical network. Although there is a plethora of research on underlay awareness, this aspect of P2P systems is still not clearly structured. In this paper, we provide a taxonomic survey that outlines the different steps for achieving underlay awareness. The main contribution of this paper is presenting a clear picture of what underlay awareness is and how it can be used to build next generation P2P systems. Impacts of underlay awareness and open research issues are also discussed.