Mapping the Gnutella Network: Properties of Large-Scale Peer-to-Peer Systems and Implications for System Design

Despite recent excitement generated by the Peer-To-Peer (P2P) paradigm and the surprisingly rapid deployment of some P2P applications, there are few quantitative evaluations of P2P systems behavior. The open architecture, achieved scale, and self-organizing structure of the Gnutella network make it an interesting P2P architecture to study. Like most other P2P applications, Gnutella builds, at the application level, a virtual network with its own routing mechanisms. The topology of this virtual network and the routing mechanisms used have a significant influence on application properties such as performance, reliability, and scalability.