  Use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) service networks introduces a new communication
paradigm because peers are both clients and servers and so each peer may
provide/request services to/from other peers. Empirical studies of P2P networks
have been undertaken and reveal useful characteristics. However there is to
date little analytical work to describe P2P networks with respect to their
communication paradigm and their interconnections. This paper provides an
analytical formulation and optimisation of peer connection efficiency, in terms
of minimising the fraction of wasted connection time. Peer connection
efficiency is analysed for both a uni- and multi-connected peer. Given this
fundamental optimisation, the paper optimises the number of connections that
peers should make use of as a function of network load, in terms of minimising
the total queue size that requests in the P2P network experience. The results
of this paper provide a basis for engineering high performance P2P
interconnection networks. The optimisations are useful for reducing bandwidth
and power consumption, e.g. in the case of peers being mobile devices with a
limited power supply. Also these results could be used to determine when a
(virtual) circuit should be switched to support a connection.

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing;Hardware Architecture;Networking and Internet Architecture