A New State-Based Connectivity Model for Peer-to-Peer Networks

Abstract

The usage of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that provide sharing of real-time environmental data by internet users is becoming more and more popular. As a result, it's necessary to identify the problems during P2P communication and to develop proper solutions. One of the major problems of P2P communication is that it's not possible to reach the clients behind devices that create private networks like network address translation (NAT) and firewalls from the public network. Among the solutions proposed for this problem, Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) and Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) are the methods most preferred in the literature. These methods seem more attractive than other NAT traversal mechanisms since they are independent from internet infrastructure and are also appropriate for dynamic structures. However, they do have some disadvantages. In this study, a new state-based end-to-end communication technique (SBN) for NAT traversal was designed and realized. The performance of the designed method was evaluated against three criteria, connectivity check delay, connection packet count and bandwidth, and compared with the ICE method. The results revealed that the suggested SBN method proved an average of 78% success in connectivity check delay, 69% in the number of packets used and 66% in the consumption of bandwidth over the ICE method.