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.
