Application Layer Peer-To-Peer Protocol Analysis : A Statistical Method for Analyzing P2P Protocols

Simulation is one of the most important techniques for analysis and improvement of technical systems. The reduction to the most important characteristics minimizes the complexity and points out the fundamental attributes. Especially in the area of the communication networks, the simulation is an indespensable method. In the last few years the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network protocols play an important role in the network analysis and simulation. Among them, eMule/eDonkey is one of the most important representatives in Europe and hence is an interesting target for investigation. The author Bjrn Schmitt presents a method for the analysis of such highly complex protocols. These are the prefix-analysis and the derived macro-analysis. The difficulties and feasibilities are shown and the approach is applied to the eMule/eDonkey protocol. This is building the base for modeling and simulating this type of network traffic.