Statistical models for Gnutella signaling traffic

Abstract

The paper is focused on signaling traffic between Gnutella peers that implement the latest Gnutella protocol specifications (v0.6). In particular, we provide analytically tractable statistical models at session level, message level and IP datagram level for traffic crossing a Gnutella ultrapeer at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) in Karlskrona, Sweden. To the best of our knowledge this is the first work that provides Gnutella v0.6 statistical models at this level of detail. These models can be implemented straightforward in network simulators such as ns2 and OmNet++. The results show that incoming requests to open a session follow a Poisson distribution. Incoming Gnutella messages across all established sessions can be described by a compound Poisson distribution. Mixture distribution models for message transfer rates include a heavy-tailed component.