Patrick Mukherjee

Practical security in p2p-based social networks

The peer-to-peer paradigm is used in more and more advanced applications. One of the next areas that promise a success for the p2p paradigm lies in the upcoming trend of social networks. However, several security issues have to be solved in p2p-based social network platforms. We present in this paper a practical solution that establishes a trust infrastructure, enables authenticated and secure communication between users in the social network and provides personalized, fine grained data access control. We implemented our solution in a p2p based platform for social networks and show that the solution is practical and lightweight both in time consumption and traffic overhead.

A Distributed Platform for Multimedia Communities

Online community platforms and multimedia content delivery are merging in recent years. Current platforms like Facebook and YouTube are client-server based which result in high administration costs for the provider. In contrast to that peer-to-peer systems offer scalability and low costs, but are limited in their functionality.In this paper we present a framework for peer-to-peer based multimedia online communities. We identified the key challenges for this new application of the peer-to-peer paradigm and built a plugin based, easily extendible and multi-functional framework. Further, we identified distributed linked lists as valuable data structure to implement the user profiles, friend lists, groups, photo albums and more. Our framework aims at providing the functionality of common online community platforms combined with the multimedia delivery capabilities of modern peer-to-peer systems, e.g. direct multimedia delivery and access to a distributed multimedia pool.

LifeSocial.KOM: A P2P-Based Platform for Secure Online Social Networks

Online social networks with millions of users are very popular nowadays. They provide a platform for the users to present themselves and to interact with each other. In this paper, we present a totally distributed platform for social online networks based on the p2p paradigm, called LifeSocial.KOM. It provides the same functionality as common online social networks, while distributing the operational load on all participating nodes. LifeSocial.KOM is plugin-based and extendible, provides secure communication and user-based data access control and integrates a monitoring component which allows the users and operators to observe the quality of the distributed system.

Piki - A Peer-to-Peer based Wiki Engine

In this paper, Wiki technology proved to be an appropriate tool for sharing global knowledge, as it provides an easy way to contribute and consume information. The way wikis are used, e.g. consuming and contributing information, naturally matches the peer-to-peer (p2p) paradigm, which inherently follows the structure of its distributed users. Compared to client-server solutions, it has significantly lower maintenance costs, no bottleneck or single point of failure, and resources are used and offered by all users. We propose a purely p2p based wiki engine (PIKI) with the focus on concurrent editing, version control, and decentralized full-text search (in a structured overlay). Further we elaborate tracking semantic information between linked articles through different versions, where a typed link itself holds meta-data about the linked files.

Benchmarking Platform for Peer-to-Peer Systems (Benchmarking Plattform für Peer-to-Peer Systeme)

Summary The benefits of the peer-to-peer paradigm have been proven through various applications besides file sharing. The requirements for the design of peer-to-peer overlay networks vary according to its purpose. In order to compare existing overlay networks and determine their suitability for specific purposes, requirements are defined with abstract quality attributes. Once the benchmarking set (quality attribute, metrics, and scenarios) is identified, experiments should be applied under the same circumstances on each overlay in order to obtain comparable results. This paper presents PeerfactSim.KOM, a simulator providing a benchmarking platform for peer-to-peer systems, especially for overlay networks. It supports defined benchmarking sets for all kinds of peer-to-peer overlays through an implemented catalogue of metrics and a simple but comprehensive scenario specification. Various peer distributions and churn rates are given which also supports geographical-location dependence. The platform is extensible due to its modular design and can scale up to around 106; peers for simple overlays such as Gnutella and 105; for more complex overlays like Kademlia. Zusammenfassung In vielen Anwendungen jenseits der Dateitauschbörsen zeigen sich die Vorteile des Peer-to-Peer Kommunikationsparadigmas. Abhängig vom Zweck variieren die Anforderungen an das Design eines geeigneten Peer-to-Peer-Overlay-Netzes. Um existierende Overlay-Netze vergleichen zu können und um zu entscheiden, ob sie für einen festgelegten Zweck geeignet sind, werden die Anforderungen mit abstrakten Qualitätsattributen beschrieben. Hat man einen Benchmarking-Satz (Qualitätsattribute, Metriken und Szenarios) identifiziert, sollte dieser, um vergleichbare Resultate zu erzielen, bei der Messung eines jeden Overlay-Netzes eingesetzt werden. Der Schwerpunkt dieser Arbeit ist Peerfact.KOM, ein Simulator, der eine Benchmarking-Plattform für Peer-to-Peer-Overlay-Netze bereitstellt. Für alle verschiedenen Arten von Peer-to-Peer-Overlay-Netzen bietet er festgelegte Benchmarking-Sätze, einen implementierten Katalog von Metriken und eine einfache, aber ausdrucksstarke Methode, um Szenarien zu spezifizieren. Verschiedene Churn-Raten und Peer-Verteilungen, die optional auch auf geographische Ortsangaben bezogen sind, werden geboten. Der Simulator ist durch sein modulares Design erweiterbar. Er skaliert bis zu 106; Peers in einfachen Overlay-Netzen wie Gnutella und 105; in komplexeren Overlay-Netzen wie Kademlia.

Peer-to-Peer Based Version Control

Many software projects are developed by globally distributed teams. The nature of the peer-to-peer paradigm fits to such an application scenario. However, existing tools to support developer require a central instance, like it is the case in version control, which is crucial for software development. This paper address the challenges version control faces in a purely peer-to-peer environment and presents a peer-to-peer based version control system we developed. We will evolve this basic approach, adding more features like change-set version control.

Peer-to-Peer-Forschung - Überblick und Herausforderungen Peer-to-Peer Research - Overview and Challenges

Zusammenfassung Peer-to-Peer ist ein fundamentales Designprinzip und stellt einen Paradigmenwechsel für die Kommunikation in Computernetzwerken dar. In diesem Beitrag wird zunächst definiert, welche Charakteristika Peer-to-Peer-Systeme ausmachen. Anhand von vier Qualitätsmerkmalen hat die Forschergruppe „QuaP2P” ihre Arbeitsbereiche untergliedert. Dieser Gliederung folgend wird anschließend der aktuelle Stand der Wissenschaft und Herausforderungen im Bereich Peer-to-Peer-Forschung zusammengefasst. Dies gibt dem Leser einen strukturieren Überblick, um sich mit den wesentlichen Arbeiten dieses hoch aktuellen Forschungsthemas auseinandersetzen zu können. Summary Peer-to-Peer is a fundamental design principle and marks a paradigm shift for communication in computer networks. In this paper first a definition for peer-to-peer systems is given based on their characteristics. Using four quality attributes the DFG Research Group “QuaP2P” subdivided its research fields. Subsequently, the state-of-the-art in peer-to-peer research and its challenges are summarized, following this classification. This will give a structured overview to the reader in order to provide him with the relevant related work when looking into this highly active research area.