BiT-SiEm: A packet-level simulation and emulation platform for BitTorrent

Simulation and emulation have been used by researchers to develop new network protocols and to test, modify and optimize existing ones; these experiments must imitate the heterogeneous nature of the Internet in a controllable environment suitable to answer what-if questions. BitTorrent is not the exception. In this paper, we present a simulation platform that allows the interaction of simulated and emulated peers; the BitTorrent protocol is implemented in the simulator with a high degree of detail in which any genuine BitTorrent implementation would seamlessly fit into the platform. To evaluate our platform, several experiments were completed with thousands of peers; then, we compared the results of these tests with two mathematical models to corroborate its correctness.