Decentralized and unstructured peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella, which uses a flooding technique to broadcast queries in the network, put a high amount of load on the underlying physical network. Edutella is another decentralized and unstructured peer-to-peer system, which also uses a flooding technique to broadcast queries in the network but organizes some of its nodes in a hypercube topology. In this thesis we have investigated the effect of topology of the overlay peer-to-peer network, on load, on the underlying physical network. We have done a quantitative analysis of Gnutella and Edutella peer-to-peer network systems by measuring messages generated in the underlying physical network in response to a query broadcast in the overlay network, using an overlay network simulator built specifically for our purpose. |