Enabling decentralised microblogging through P2PVPNs

Abstract

The need for user privacy in social networks has prompted the exploration of social networking designs which do not rely on the common centralised client-server model. Many peer-to-peer microblogging solutions have been proposed and/or implemented utilising various technologies such as DHTs, multicast trees, and/or gossip protocols. We propose a decentralised microblogging service that leverages available Peer-to-Peer Virtual Private Networking P2PVPN technologies. By leveraging the private IP connectivity of P2PVPNs, our design utilises both IP multicasting and data replication through high degree nodes to ensure that peers are able to publish messages with varying degree of scope. We study the implications of our data dissemination model for a decentralised microblogging service through simulation-based analysis using a 3-million user social graph from Orkut. We also developed a prototype implementation to demonstrate the feasibility of our design choices along with a small deployment on FutureGrid to test its performance on the internet.