10-06-2017, 07:06 AM
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Across Private Networks Using Proxy Servers
The Internet today is commonly used as a medium to share large size multimedia content. This sharing is carried out, a number of times, through the Peer to Peer sharing architecture rather than the conventional server-client model. The paucity of network addresses in the Internet has led to the emergence of private and global networks. Because the identity of peers in a private network remains hidden behind their global endpoint, P2P applications cannot run between two peers in separate private networks. Techniques such as hole-punching require the use of a centralized entity which serves as a bottleneck to the P2P application.
We have proposed a hierarchical P2P network of private and global networks. Here, the lower tier is formed by the peers in each private network, while the upper tier is formed by the global endpoints (called proxies) of each of these private networks. We have designed a new file sharing protocol, FTPNP, between these proxies which preserves the identities of the actual endpoints of the file transfer, present in separate private networks. We have also created a Credit Management System in order to ensure fairness and incentive to share in the designed hierarchical P2P system. We have implemented all the above proposed features and tested them to ensure the preservation of the essential features of a P2P network.