P-sim: a simulator for peer-to-peer networks

Abstract

In the past few years, there has been intense interest in designing and studying peer-to-peer networks. Many initial measurement studies on current deployed peer-to-peer networks attempted to understand their performance. However, the large size and complex nature of these networks make it difficult to analyze their properties. Simulation of these peer-to-peer networks enables a methodical evaluation and analysis of their performance. However, to our knowledge, there is no tool for simulating different peer-to-peer network protocols for a comparative study. We present p-sim: a tool that can simulate peer-to-peer networks on top of representative Internet topologies, p-sim has several capabilities to provide an accurate model of real-world peer-to-peer networks, p-sim can scale to thousands of nodes and is extensible to simulate new peer-to-peer network protocols. In this paper, we discuss the capabilities of p-sim, its user-interface and two case-studies.