During the past decade, the Internet has witnessed a dramatic increase in the popularity of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications. This has caused a significant growth in the volume of P2P traffic. This trend has been particularly alarming for the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that need to cope with the associated cost but have limited control in routing or managing P2P traffic. To alleviate this problem, researchers have proposed mechanisms to reduce the volume of external P2P traffic for individual ISPs. However, prior studies have not examined the global effect of P2P applications on the entire network, namely the traffic that a P2P application imposes on individual underlying Autonomous Systems (ASs). Such a global view is particularly important because of the large number of geographically scattered peers in P2P applications. This dissertation examines the global effect of P2P applications on the underlying AS-level Internet. Toward this end, first we leverage a large number of complete overlay snapshots from a large-scale P2P application, namely Gnutella, to characterize the connectivity and evolution of its overlay structure. We also conduct a case study on the performance of BitTorrent and its correlation with peer- and group-level properties. Second, we present and evaluate Respondent-driven sampling as a promising technique to collect unbiased samples for characterizing peer properties in large-scale P2P overlays without requiring the overlay's complete snapshot. Third, we propose a new technique leveraging the geographical location of peers in an AS to determine its geographical footprint and identify the cities where its Points-of-Presence (PoPs) are likely to be located. Fourth, we present a new methodology to characterize the effect of a given P2P overlay on the underlying ASs. Our approach relies on the large scale simulation of BGP routing over the AS-level snapshots of the Internet to identify the imposed load on each transit AS. Using our methodology, we characterize the impact of Gnutella overlay on the AS-level underlay over a 4-year period. Our investigation provides valuable insights on the global impact of large scale P2P overlay on individual ASs. This dissertation includes my previously published and co-authored material.

Researchers who aim to evaluate proposed modifications to the Internet’s architecture face a unique set of challenges. Internet-based measurements provide limited value to such evaluations, as the quantities being measured are easily lost to ambiguity and idiosyncrasy. While simulations offer more control, Internet-like environments are difficult to construct due to the lack of ground truth in critical areas, such as topological structure and traffic patterns. This thesis develops a network topology and traffic models for a simulation-based evaluation of the PURSUIT rendezvous system, the name-based interdomain routing mechanism of an information-centric future Internet architecture. Although the empirical data used to construct the employed models is imperfect, it is nonetheless useful for identifying invariants which can shed light upon significant architectural characteristics. The contribution of this work is twofold. In addition to being directly applicable to the evaluation of PURSUIT’s rendezvous system, the methods used in this thesis may be applied more generally to any studies which aim to simulate Internet-like systems. / Forskare som syftar till att utvärdera föreslagna ändringar av Internet arkitektur står inför en unik uppsättning utmaningar. Internet-baserade mätningar ger begränsat värde för sådana utvärderingar, eftersom de kvantiteter som mäts är lätt förlorade mot tvetydighet och egenhet. Även om simuleringar ger mer kontroll är Internet-liknande miljöer svåra att konstruera på grund av bristen på kända principer i kritiska områden, såsom topologiska struktur och trafikmönster. Denna avhandling utvecklar en nättopologi och trafikmodeller för en simulering baserad utvärdering av PURSUIT mötesplatsen systemet, den namn-baserade interdomän routing mekanismen för en informations-centrerad arkitektur av framtidens Internet. Även om de empiriska data som används för att konstruera modeller är bristfällig, är det ändå användbart för att identifiera invarianter som kan belysa viktiga arkitektoniska egenskaper. Bidraget från detta arbete har två syften. Förutom att vara direkt tillämplig för utvärderingen av PURSUITs rendezvous system, kan de metoder som används i denna avhandling användas mer allmänt för studier som syftar till att simulera Internet-liknande system.