DirectShare : a fast and secure peer to peer file sharing protocol

Abstract

Many Peer to Peer (P2P) protocols and applications have become popular in the recent years and P2P accounts for a very large portion of the internet traffic. But, most protocols are designed with speed and efficiency in mind, and not security. In this thesis a new protocol DirectShare is proposed; it is primarily designed for a large user base but with security in mind. DirectShare allows to share files in a very efficient manner, at the same time there are provisions to allow for strictly restricted file sharing between a group of users, there are also techniques which guarantees the identity of users. The security is implemented at the base level of the protocol and not as an extension, this allows for better control over the security aspects, and as the protocol can identify users uniquely, incentives can be given in a fair way to the users who provide resources to the network, which will help improve the overall user experience. At the same time DirectShare is extensible and can incorporate new features by addition of commands and responses. The DirectShare protocol has been implemented as an application and is being used in the real world. The the measured performance of DirectShare is consistent with other protocol of similar nature.