\section{Related Work}
\label{sec:related}

Measurements and improvements in Peer-to-Peer systems have been the focus of
commercial and scientific players alike. Thorough analysis, a diversity of
approaches, different interests have sparked a plethora of novel mechanisms,
architectures, updates and extensions to existing applications as well as new
and improved implementations to both old and new problems. Recent years have
shown particular interest in the streaming capabilities of Peer-to-Peer
solutions, resulting in a surge of updates, extensions and trials. Novel
protocols such as swift are proof to the continuous birth of new protocols in
the ever evolving Internet.

Most measurements and evaluations involving the BitTorrent protocol and
applications are either concerned with the behavior of a real-world swarm or
with the internal design of the protocol. There has been little focus on
creating a self-sustained swarm management environment capable of deploying
hundreds of controlled peers, and subsequently gathering results and
interpreting them.

The PlanetLab infrastructure provides a realistic testbed for Peer-to-Peer
experiments. PlanetLab nodes are connected to the Internet and experiments have
a more realistic testbed where delays, bandwidth and other are subject to
change. Tools are also available to aid in conducting experiments and data
collection \cite{planetLab}.

Pouwelse et al. \cite{pouwelse} have done extensive analysis on the BitTorrent
protocol using large real-world swarms focusing on the overall performance and
user satisfaction. Guo et al. \cite{guo} have modeled the BitTorrent protocol
and provided a formal approach to its functionality. Bharambe et al.
\cite{bharambe} have done extensive studies on improving BitTorrent’s network
performance.

Garbacki et al. \cite{garbacki} have created a simulator for testing 2Fast, a
collaborative download protocol. The simulator is useful only for small swarms
that require control. Real-world experiments involved using real systems
communicating with real BitTorrent clients in the swarm.

