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Measurement Based Analysis of One-Click File Hosting Services

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Abstract

It is commonly believed that file sharing traffic on the Internet is mostly generated by peer-to-peer applications. However, we show that HTTP based file sharing services are also extremely popular. We analyzed the traffic of a large research and education network for three months, and observed that a large fraction of the inbound HTTP traffic corresponds to file download services, which indicates that an important portion of file sharing traffic is in the form of HTTP data. In particular, we found that two popular one-click file hosting services are among the top Internet domains in terms of served traffic volume. In this paper, we present an exhaustive study of the traffic generated by such services, the behavior of their users, the downloaded content, and their server infrastructure.

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Notes

  1. We avoid disclosing the name of the organization for privacy concerns.

  2. Throughout this work, we use the terms direct download and one-click file hosting to refer to HTTP-based file sharing services interchangeably.

  3. According to our data, RapidShare enhanced their login procedure on June 8th. As of this writing, sessions cannot be tracked with this simple approach.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous research institution for allowing the collection and analysis of their traffic for research purposes. We are also grateful to Ismael Castell-Uroz for his assistance and feedback. This work includes GeoLite data created by MaxMind, available from http://www.maxmind.com. We acknowledge Ipoque for kindly providing access to their PACE [30] traffic classification engine for this research work. This research has been partially funded by the Comissionat per a Universitats i Recerca del DIUE de la Generalitat de Catalunya (ref. 2009SGR-1140).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departament d’Arquitectura de Computadors, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord UPC, D6 Building. Jordi Girona 1-3, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Josep Sanjuàs-Cuxart, Pere Barlet-Ros & Josep Solé-Pareta

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  1. Josep Sanjuàs-Cuxart
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  2. Pere Barlet-Ros
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  3. Josep Solé-Pareta
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Correspondence to Josep Sanjuàs-Cuxart.

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Sanjuàs-Cuxart, J., Barlet-Ros, P. & Solé-Pareta, J. Measurement Based Analysis of One-Click File Hosting Services. J Netw Syst Manage 20, 276–301 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10922-011-9202-4

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