Swarming: Scalable Content for the Masses
Daniel Stutzbach
Directed Research Project(Dec 2003)
Keywords: content delivery; swarming

My research is the first formal study of swarming, a peer-to-peer technology for transferring files. Using simulation, I show swarming's excellent scalability and quick response to request surges. I explore the way swarming handles different types of load, and provide a preliminary examination of swarming variations. Swarming is an important technology for the Internet, as it allows small users to publish to large audiences. Currently, costs grow dramatically as the number of viewers increases. Therefore, only wealthy individuals and large organizations can afford to publish to a large audience, particularly for audio or video content.