Passive characterization of sopcast usage in residential ISPs

In this paper we present an extensive analysis of traffic generated by SopCast users and collected from operative networks of three national ISPs in Europe. After more than a year of continuous monitoring, we present results about the popularity of SopCast which is the largely preferred application in the studied networks. We focus on analysis of (i) application and bandwidth usage at different time scales, (ii) peer lifetime, arrival and departure processes, (iii) peer localization in the world. Results provide useful insights into users´ behavior, including their attitude towards P2P-TV application usage and the consequent generated load on the network, that is quite variable based on the access technology and geographical location. Our findings are interesting to Researchers interested in the investigation of users´ attitude towards P2P-TV services, to foresee new trends in the future usage of the Internet, and to augment the design of their application.