Internet-Scale Simulations of a Peer Selection Algorithm

The match between a peer-to-peer overlay and the physical Internet infrastructure is a constant issue. Time-constrained peer-to-peer applications such as live streaming systems are even more challenging because participating peers have to discover their closest neighbors as quickly as possible. We propose in this paper an approach based on landmarks and a management server. Despite its centralized architecture, this method can scale to a large population of peers. We focus in this paper on challenging this basic idea through intensive simulations, using a large-scale map of the Internet router (IR) layer in a simulator dedicated to peer-to-peer systems. We compare the results obtained by the new method with a random selection and an optimal selection and we show that this proposal makes sense.