Method and System of Administrating a Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Network

• US 20100161752A1
• Filed: 12/17/2009
• Published: 06/24/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/19/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Truntschka, Carole, Collet, Jean-Luc, Drouet, Francois-Xavier, Coulomb, Beatrice
• Granted Patent: US 8,924,460 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/216
• 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

Abstract

A computer-implemented method, system, and computer program product for administering a peer-to-peer file sharing computer network. The method includes: maintaining a reference associating a particular shared file with a seeder in a community of peers and a number of seeders in the community; and registering a second peer as a second seeder of the particular shared file, if a first seeder in the community of peers has informed the peers of a termination of the availability of a file seeding of the particular shared file. The system includes means for performing the steps of the method. The computer program product includes computer program instructions for carrying out the steps of the method.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of administering a peer-to-peer file sharing computer network, said method comprising:

maintaining a reference associating a particular shared file with a seeder in a community of peers and a number of seeders in said community; and

registering a second peer as a second seeder of said particular shared file, if a first seeder in said community of peers has informed said peers of a termination of the availability of a file seeding of said particular shared file.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising informing said peers of said community if said number of seeders falls below a predetermined number of seeders.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein said second peer has volunteered to seed said particular shared file.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein said second peer has been designated to seed said particular shared file.

5. The method according to claim 1, further comprising said second peer downloading said particular shared file.

6. The method according to claim 1, further comprising excluding said second peer being from said community of peers.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein said termination of the availability of a file seeding of said particular shared file is detected by monitoring said seeder.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein said community of peers is obtained by selecting a plurality of peers among peers of said peer-to-peer file sharing computer network and by applying predetermined thresholds to a performance indicator regularly measured in said peer-to-peer network, and wherein said indicator is a response time, an available disk space, or an available bandwidth.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein a condition for a peer to join said community of peers is seeding a file.

19. A computer program product for administering a peer-to-peer file sharing computer network, said computer program product comprising computer program instructions for carrying out the steps of the method according to claim 1, wherein said computer program instructions are stored on a computer readable storage medium.

10. A computer-implemented system of administering a peer-to-peer file sharing computer network, said system comprising:

means for maintaining a reference associating a particular shared file with a seeder in a community of peers and a number of seeders in said community; and

means for registering a second peer as a second seeder of said particular shared file, if a first seeder in said community of peers has informed said peers of said termination.

11. The system according to claim 10, further comprising means for informing said peers of said community if said number of seeders falls below a predetermined number of seeders.

12. The system according to claim 10, wherein said second peer has volunteered to seed said particular shared file.

13. The system according to claim 10, wherein said second peer has been designated to seed said particular shared file.

14. The system according to claim 10, further comprising means for said second peer to download said particular shared file.

15. The system according to claim 10, further comprising means for excluding said second peer being from said community of peers.

16. The system according to claim 10, wherein said termination of the availability of a file seeding of said particular shared file is detected by monitoring said seeder.

17. The system according to claim 10, wherein said community of peers is obtained by selecting a plurality of peers among peers of said peer-to-peer file sharing computer network and by applying predetermined thresholds to a performance indicator regularly measured in said peer-to-peer network, and wherein said indicator is a response time, an available disk space, or an available bandwidth.

18. The system according to claim 10, wherein a condition for a peer to join said community of peers is seeding a file.