This document is http://videdot.com/ideas/p2p-perf
We can make peer-to-peer downloading systems with better interfaces and improve performance by passing meta-information between the peers and making the right calculations throughout the network.
The only party that can know what the queue is like at a particular peer offering a portion of a download is that peer itself. Often peers that are trying to find a piece of content will not be able to offer a useful estimate of the time to completion to their users because they do not know where they are in the queue, or how long those in front are likely to take.
Furthermore, analysis of peer-to-peer systems is made very difficult by the lack of knowledge about other peers. Researchers often have to guess about the off-site performance or build quite presumptive models of how systems will behave. An annotated P2P system, passing rich performance data between its members would enable a more meaningful user-interface, more sensible behaviour in choosing to wait, look elsewhere or abort a transfer and by doing so reduce some of the load made by multiple, speculative download attempts as a user or client makes the same transfer from multiple places simultaneously to try and improve their own perceived performance at the expense of others'.
To follow.
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