by Ralf Steinmetz (Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany)

 

Overlay networking is more than just a means for exchanging files.

Currently emerging in application areas other than file sharing, peer-to-peer systems take on a communication paradigm different to classical client-server architectures: using cooperation instead of coordination, using decentralization and self-organization in place of centralization, and using incentives instead of controlling.

 

The benefits of the peer-to-peer paradigm have been proven through various applications besides file sharing. The requirements for the design of peer-to-peer overlay networks vary according to its purpose. In order to compare existing overlay networks and determine their suitability for specific purposes, requirements are defined with abstract quality attributes. Once the benchmarking set (quality attribute, metrics, and scenarios) is identified, experiments should be applied under the same circumstances on each overlay in order to obtain comparable results.

 

In this talk results obtained at the German Research Unit on the "Improvement of the Quality of Peer-to-Peer Systems by Systematically Researching Quality Features and Their Interdependencies" (FOR 733) funded by the German national science foundation (DFG) will be discussed.