BitThief - A Free Riding BitTorrent ClientWhat is BitThief?
BitThief is an ongoing research project of the Distributed Computing Group at ETH Zurich. In this project we study selfish behavior in distributed systems, and in particular in peer-to-peer filesharing systems. The lack of incentives to contribute resources potentially results in a total collapse of a peer-to-peer system, implying that it is essential for a completely decentralized system to incorporate protocols that ensure a fair sharing of resources.
How does it work?
BitThief is a free riding BitTorrent client, that is, it downloads from BitTorrent swarms without contributing any resources itself. As such it proved that the BitTorrent protocol fails to prevent uncooperative behavior as it does not provide any countermeasures against free riding clients. For details, please read our HotNets 2006 research paper.
We argue that the BitTorrent protocol must be modified in order to effectively prevent selfishness. We have designed a tit-for-tat (T4T) protocol that achieves this goal. BitThief clients can use the T4T protocol to fairly exchange data between themselves. For details, please read our P2P 2007 research paper, and our Infocom 2011 research paper.
Name is Program, only leech
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