Advertisement

The Nature of Peer-to-Peer Traffic

  • João V. P. GomesEmail author
  • Pedro R. M. Inácio
  • Mário M. Freire
  • Manuela Pereira
  • Paulo P. Monteiro
Chapter
First Online:

Abstract

The massive adoption of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications brings new challenges for network management. The increase of the bandwidth usage, the shift of the Internet habits of home users and the easiness to share and provide contents is changing the traffic characteristics, and breaking strong assumptions in which network design is based. As a response to concerns from network administrators and Internet Service Providers, traffic management is now a requirement instead of an option, making the traffic classification functionality into an essential administration tool. However, the evasive nature of most P2P applications renders the classification of their traffic a difficult task to achieve even through Deep Packet Inspections of the data units, mostly due to the application of encryption and randomizationmechanisms. In order to meet the demand for new and accurate methods for traffic classification in the dark, it is necessary to study and fully understand the deep nature of P2P traffic. In this chapter, the characteristics of this type of traffic are discussed and explained, and recent studies about traffic characterisation are introduced and analysed from the perspective that may enable their application for traffic classification.

Keywords

Packet Size Internet Service Provider Instant Messaging Voice Over Internet Protocol User Datagram Protocol 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Fundacção para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, through the grant contracts SFRH/BDE/15592/2006, SFRH/BDE/15643/2006 and PTDC/EIA/73072/2006 TRAMANET: Traffic and Trust Management in Peer-to- Peer Networks, Nokia Siemens Networks Portugal S.A., Portugal and University of Beira Interior, Portugal.

Reference

  1. 1.
    BBC iPlayer. URL http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ . Last access at August 20th, 2008
  2. 2.
    Dailymotion – Share Your Videos. URL http://www.dailymotion.com. Last access at August 8th, 2008
  3. 3.
    Joost – Free online TV . URL http://www.joost.com. Last access at August 20th, 2008
  4. 4.
    Miro – free, open source internet tv and video player. URL http://www.getmiro.com . Last access at August 20th, 2008
  5. 5.
    NetPDL Language Specification. URL http://www.nbee.org/doku.php?id=netpdl:index. Last access at August 7th, 2008
  6. 6.
    Snort – the de facto standard for intrusion detection/prevention. URL http://www.snort.org. Last access at November 30th, 2008
  7. 7.
    The NetBee Library. URL http://www.nbee.org/doku.php. Last access at August 7th, 2008
  8. 8.
    Wireshark: Go deep. URL http://www.wireshark.org. Last access at August 7th, 2008
  9. 9.
    YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. URL http://www.youtube.com. Last access at August 8th, 2008
  10. 10.
    Bernaille, L., Akodkenou, I., Soule, A., Salamatian, K.: Traffic Classification On The Fly. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 36 (2), 23–26 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. 11.
    Blau, J.: Europe Looks for a Peer-to-Peer TV Alternative (2008). URL http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr08/6119. Last access at June 26th, 2008
  12. 12.
    Bonfiglio, D., Mellia, M., Meo, M., Rossi, D., Tofanelli, P.: Revealing Skype Traffic: When Randomness Plays with You. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2007 Conference on Applications, Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communications, pp. 37–48. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA (2007)Google Scholar
  13. 13.
    Constantinou, F., Mavrommatis, P.: Identifying Known and Unknown Peer-to-Peer Traffic. In: Proceedings of Fifth IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications, pp. 93–102 (2006)Google Scholar
  14. 14.
    Crawshaw, J.: Deep Packet Inspection: Taming the P2P Traffic Beast. Ligth Reading Insider 6 (7) (2006)Google Scholar
  15. 15.
    Dhamankar, R., King, R.: Protocol Identification via Statistical Analysis (PISA). White Paper, Tipping Point (2007)Google Scholar
  16. 16.
    Erman, J., Mahanti, A., Arlitt, M., Williamson, C.: Identifying and Discriminating Between Web and Peer-to-Peer Traffic in the Network Core. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 883–892. ACM Press New York, NY, USA (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. 17.
    Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority : Decision of the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority on Compliance with Law of the Sonera Puhekaista Service (2003). URL http://www.ficora.fi/attachments/englanti/1156489127354/Files%/CurrentFile/SoneraPuhekaista.pdf. Last access at August 2nd, 2008
  18. 18.
    Gerber, A., Houle, J., Nguyen, H., Roughan, M., Sen, S.: P2P The Gorilla in the Cable. In: National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) 2003 National Show. Chicago, IL (2003)Google Scholar
  19. 19.
    Gomes, J., Incio, P., Freire, M., Pereira, M., Monteiro, P.: Capturing the Nature of Peer-to-Peer Traffic Using Fast Entropy Analysis. Submitted for publicationGoogle Scholar
  20. 20.
    Gomes, J., Incio, P., Freire, M., Pereira, M., Monteiro, P.: Analysis of Peer-to-Peer Traffic Using a Behavioural Method Based on Entropy. In: Proceedings of the IPCCC 2008, IEEE International Performance Computing and Communications Conference (2008)Google Scholar
  21. 21.
    Johnson, M.E., McGuire, D., Willey, N.D.: The Evolution of the Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Industry and the Security Risks for Users. In: Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp. 383–383. IEEE Press, Waikoloa, HI, USA (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. 22.
    Karagiannis, T., Broido, A., Brownlee, N., Claffy, K., Faloutsos, M.: Is P2P Dying or Just Hiding. In: Proceedings of the IEEE GLOBECOM ’04 Global Telecommunications Conference, vol. 3, pp. 1532–1538 (2004)Google Scholar
  23. 23.
    Karagiannis, T., Broido, A., Faloutsos, M.: Transport Layer Identification of P2P Traffic. In: Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, pp. 121–134. ACM Press New York, NY, USA, Taormina, Sicily, Italy (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. 24.
    Karagiannis, T., Papagiannaki, K., Faloutsos, M.: BLINC: Multilevel Traffic Classification in the Dark. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM ’05 Conference on Applications, Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communications, vol. 35, pp. 229–240. ACM Press New York, NY, USA, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. 25.
    Karagiannis, T., Rodriguez, P., Papagiannaki, K.: Should Internet Service Providers Fear Peer-assisted Content Distribution? In: Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, pp. 1–14. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. 26.
    Korpi, S.: Internet Telephony – Security Issues in Skype. Mobile Communities, Seminar on Internetworking (2006). Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory, Helsinki University of TechnologyGoogle Scholar
  27. 27.
    Lehtinen, J.: Design and Implementation of Mobile Peer-to-Peer Application. Master’s thesis, Helsinki University of Technology (2006)Google Scholar
  28. 28.
    Madhukar, A., Williamson, C.: A Longitudinal Study of P2P Traffic Classification . In: Proceedings of 14th IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, pp. 179–188 (2006)Google Scholar
  29. 29.
    Moore, A., Papagiannaki, K.: Toward the Accurate Identification of Network Applications. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop in Passive and Active Network Measurement. Springer, Boston, MA, USA (2005)Google Scholar
  30. 30.
    Perényi, M., Dang, T., Gefferth, A., Molnr, S.: Identification and Analysis of Peer-to-Peer Traffic. Journal of Communications 1 (7), 36–46 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. 31.
    Rodriguez, P., Tan, S.M., Gkantsidis, C.: On the Feasibility of Commercial, Legal P2P Content Distribution. SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 36 (1), 75–78 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. 32.
    Sabbagh, D.: BBC iPlayer ‘risks overloading the internet’ (2008). URL http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/art%icle3716781.ece. Last access at August 20th, 2008
  33. 33.
    Sen, S., Spatscheck, O., Wang, D.: Accurate, Scalable In-Network Identification of P2P Traffic Using Application Signatures. In: Proceedings of the 13th Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 512–521. ACM Press New York, NY, USA (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. 34.
    Sen, S., Wang, J.: Analyzing Peer-to-Peer Traffic Across Large Networks. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 12 (2), 219–232 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. 35.
    Shannon, C.E.: A Mathematical Theory of Communication. The Bell System Technical Journal 27 (3), 379–423 (1948)zbMATHMathSciNetGoogle Scholar
  36. 36.
    Xie, H., Yang, Y.R., Silberschatz, A.: Towards ISP-Compliant, Peer-Friendly P2P Design . In: Proceedings of The IFIP International Federation for Information Processing Networking, pp. 375–384 (2008)Google Scholar
  37. 37.
    Yu, F.: High Speed Deep Packet Inspection with Hardware Support. Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley (2006)Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Authors and Affiliations

  • João V. P. Gomes
    • 1
    • 2
    Email author
  • Pedro R. M. Inácio
    • 1
    • 2
  • Mário M. Freire
    • 2
  • Manuela Pereira
    • 2
  • Paulo P. Monteiro
    • 1
    • 3
  1. 1.Nokia Siemens Networks Portugal, S. A., AlfragideAmadoraPortugal
  2. 2.Institute of Telecommunications - Networks and Multimedia Group, Department of Computer ScienceUniversity of Beira InteriorCovilhãPortugal
  3. 3.Institute of Telecommunications - Pólo de AveiroUniversity of AveiroAveiroPortugal

Personalised recommendations

Cite chapter

Buy options