Peer-to-Peer Download And Seed Policy Management

• US 20080005336A1
• Filed: 04/26/2007
• Published: 01/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 04/26/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rainberry, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Bittorrent Incorporated
• Inventors: Hazel, Steven, Harrison, David, Cohen, Bram, Hazel, Gregory
• Granted Patent: US 8,738,778 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/227
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/104 Peer-to-peer [P2P] networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1085 involving dynamic management of active down- or uploading connections
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/60 Scheduling or organising the servicing of application requests, e.g. requests for application data transmissions using the analysis and optimisation of the required network resources admission control or resource allocation H04L47/70

Abstract

Transfer policy management methods in a peer-to-peer networking environment such as BitTorrent are provided. A download TPM maximizes the usage of available bandwidth, while focusing on as few torrents as possible. For a given list of torrents, a peer in accordance with the present invention determines how many download connections to maintain at a given time in order to maximize usage of bandwidth. If the variance of per-connection bandwidths exceeds a threshold, more connections are added until either variance does not exceed the threshold or a maximum number of connections are established. A seeding peer determines when to reduce the number of files being seeded by monitoring its average upload rate per torrent. If its average rate falls below a threshold, then the peer stops seeding a file. The file that the peer stops seeding is one to which the peer is making the smallest overall contribution.

Claims

1. A method for downloading files in a peer-to-peer environment, the method comprising:

establishing a first number of connections, each connection between a first peer and one of a plurality of uploading peers;

determining a variance of bandwidth used by each of the first number of connections;

responsive to the variance exceeding a threshold, establishing at least one additional connection between the first peer and another of the plurality of uploading peers.

2. A system for downloading files in a peer-to-peer environment, the system comprising:

a download connections manager adapted to establish connections between a first peer and other peers of a plurality of uploading peers; and

a bandwidth monitoring engine adapted to determine a variance of bandwidth used by each of the connections established by the download connections manager, and further adapted to instruct the download connections manager to establish at least one additional connection between the first peer and other peers of the plurality of uploading peers responsive to the variance exceeding a threshold.

3. A method for uploading files in a peer-to-peer environment, the method comprising:

providing a first plurality of files to a plurality of peers;

determining an average upload rate at which the first plurality of files are provided to the plurality of peers;

responsive to the average upload rate being less than a threshold rate, ceasing to provide one of the files of the first plurality of files to the plurality of peers.