Measurement of eDonkey Activity with Distributed Honeypots

TL;DR

This paper presents a distributed honeypot-based system for measuring user activity in the eDonkey peer-to-peer network, analyzing how different parameters affect data collection and system effectiveness.

Contribution

It introduces a novel distributed measurement platform using honeypots for eDonkey, enabling detailed analysis of user activity and system parameters.

Findings

Measurement duration impacts data quality

Number of honeypots influences data coverage

Advertised files affect user query patterns

Abstract

Collecting information about user activity in peer-to-peer systems is a key but challenging task. We describe here a distributed platform for doing so on the eDonkey network, relying on a group of honeypot peers which claim to have certain files and log queries they receive for these files. We then conduct some measurements with typical scenarios and use the obtained data to analyze the impact of key parameters like measurement duration, number of honeypots involved, and number of advertised files. This illustrates both the possible uses of our measurement system, and the kind of data one may collect using it.