An Activeness-Based Seed Choking Algorithm for Enhancing BitTorrent's Robustness

BitTorrent suffers from the free-riding problem induced by selfish peers, hurting the system robustness. Existing research studies have focused on the fairness, performance, and robustness of BitTorrent, resulting from the Tit-For-Tat (TFT) choking algorithm, while very few studies have considered the effect of the seed choking algorithm. This paper experimentally analyzes the impact of the free riding of selfish peers on BitTorrent's performance and robustness, and proposes an activeness-based seed choking algorithm, where according to the activeness values of request peers, which are the ratios of the available download bandwidth to the available upload bandwidth, a seed preferentially uploads to five request peers with the highest activeness values, without any explicit reputation management system. Our simulation experiments show that compared to existing seed choking algorithms, the activeness-based seed choking algorithm not only restrains the free riding of selfish peers but also improves the performance of benign peers, enhancing BitTorrent's robustness.

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