Abstract

BitTorrent is one of the most well-known file sharing protocols in the world. Its rapid rise in popularity is mainly due to the high speeds it can offer its users, even with a very limited infrastructure.

But can a user download any faster? A traditional distributed system often consists of trusted nodes which co-operate in order to maximise the performance of the system as a whole, even if it means getting worse performance for a single node. In a torrent swarm however, a user is communicating with a bunch of strangers. Is it possible to download faster by degrading the performance of the system? This talk considers possible ways to exploit the BitTorrent protocol in order to download as fast as possible.