Measurement for P2P Overlays

This chapter provides an overview on the measurement for P2P overlays. The P2P overlay depends on the service characteristics of the underlying network, but in today's Internet the state of links and routers is not easily available to applications. Thus, many overlay networks use periodic probing of the underlying network to measure network conditions. Since such measurements on the scale of a P2P overlay can significantly load the network, techniques for reducing the probing are of interest. P2P overlays frequently need to exploit network latency for decisions regarding locality, proximity, and topology. This chapter discusses the use of Internet coordinate systems and other techniques for estimating latency-related measurements in P2P overlays. Internet coordinates systems, meridian, accuracy and overhead, network embedding, and so on are briefly discussed.