Analysis of peer-to-peer traffic on ADSL

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications now generate the majority of Internet traffic, particularly for users on ADSL because of flatrate tarification. In this study, we focus on four popular P2P systems to characterize the utilization, the performance and the evolution of P2P traffic in general. We observe and compare the influence of each P2P application over the traffic, and we evaluate the evolution of these P2P systems over a year. Our analysis is based on ADSL traffic captured at TCP level on a Broadband Access Server comprising thousands of users. Thus, we characterize the P2P traffic and users, and we draw interesting results on connectivity and cooperation between peers, localization of sources, termination of connections and performance limitations. The evolution of the traffic over the year allows us to see the dynamics of the use of P2P systems. The difference between week days and week-end days informs us about the behavior of P2P users.