A Fluid-Diffusive Approach for Modelling P2P Systems

This paper presents an application of basic concepts of statistical physics to devise an approximate model describing the dynamics of large peer-to-peer networks, based on fluid-diffusive equations. The model we propose is quite general and highly modular, and allows to represent several effects related to resources distribution among peers, user behavior, resource localization algorithms and dynamic structure of the overlay topology. Since the complexity of the model is largely independent of the system size, it provides a viable alternative to Montecarlo approaches for the analysis of very large P2P systems.