Behaviors of bandwidth theft in Xunlei

Abstract

As one of the most popular applications in China, Xunlei's excellent performance attracts us to pay more attentions to its system mechanism. The issue of bandwidth theft in Xunlei is one of our focuses. Although its proprietary nature and its use of data encryption hinder our studies of Xunlei to some extent, we analyze and evaluate behaviors of bandwidth theft in Xunlei based on our measurements. We not only observe the existence of bandwidth theft in Xunlei, but also find that it can deliver a large fraction of data using in-line links. In our further evaluation, we affirm the capability of Xunlei in integrating resources within a web site. Instead of condemning, we consider that the partial bandwidth theft in Xunlei can help us utilize Internet resources efficiently. Xunlei's partial bandwidth theft also inspired us to propose a business driven resource integration platform for making a good use of the whole Internet.