| Sponsor | Ellen Zegura and Richard Liston ewz@cc.gatech.edu liston@cc.gatech.edu GCATT (Ellen) |
| Area | Networking |
Problem
Gnutella is a distributed application designed for file sharing and discovery.
It has recently been widely discussed in the media in the wake of the Napster
controversy. In contrast to Napster, which is a centralized file sharing
mechanism, Gnutella is completely decentralized. The topological makeup of
the Gnutella network is highly dynamic; users may join and leave at will.
The purpose of this project is to probe members of the Gnutella network
in order to discover characteristics of the network - e.g., how many users
there tend to be at any point in time; how long users tend to participate;
how many files they tend to share etc.
Deliverables
The first step will be to learn how the Gnutella implementation provided
operates. I will then probe the Gnutella network
and discover properties of the network as described above. I will deliver
a report on the findings, including any supporting figures and graphs which
may be useful in describing the network properties.