File-Aware P2P Traffic Classification and Management

As P2P dominates Internet traffic in recent years, ISPs are striving to balance between providing the basic networking service for P2P users and properly managing network bandwidth usage. However, current P2P traffic management strategies are unable to satisfy both requirements. A file-aware P2P traffic classification method is presented in this paper. It can identify a file and the associated flows. Based on the file-level concurrent flow information, ISPs can adopt more efficient and flexible strategies to manage P2P traffic. We offered two alternatives: limiting the aggregated bandwidth consumption or the number of concurrent flows that a peer can use to download a particular file.