DHT-based traffic localization in the wild

BitTorrent is both the dominant Peer-to-Peer (P2P) protocol for file-sharing and a nightmare for ISPs due to its network agnostic nature. Many solutions exist to localize BitTorrent traffic relying on cooperation between ISPs and the trackers. Recently, BitTorrent users have been abandoning the trackers in favor of Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs). Despite DHTs are complex heterogeneous systems, DHT-based traffic localization is also possible; however, it is unclear how it performs. The goal of this work is to measure DHT-based traffic localization in the wild. We run multiple experiments involving up to five commercial ISPs and a maximum duration of one month, collecting about 400 GB of BitTorrent traffic. Then, we perform an extensive analysis with the following goals: understand the impact of system parameters, verify accuracy of the measurements, estimate the localization benefits.