Abstract—The popularity of contents on the Internet is often
said to follow a Zipf-like distribution. Different measurement
studies showed, however, significantly different distributions de-
pending on the measurement methodology they followed. We
performed a large-scale measurement of the most popular peer-
to-peer (P2P) content distribution system, BitTorrent, over eleven
months. We collected data on a daily to weekly basis from
500 to 800 trackers, with information about 40 to 60 million
peers that participated in the distribution of over 10 million
torrents. Based on these measurements we show how fundamental
characteristics of the observed distribution of content popularity
change depending on the measurement methodology and the
length of the observation interval. We show that while short-term
or small-scale measurements can conclude that the popularity of
contents exhibits a power-law tail, the tail is likely exponentially
decreasing, especially over long time intervals.
said to follow a Zipf-like distribution. Different measurement
studies showed, however, significantly different distributions de-
pending on the measurement methodology they followed. We
performed a large-scale measurement of the most popular peer-
to-peer (P2P) content distribution system, BitTorrent, over eleven
months. We collected data on a daily to weekly basis from
500 to 800 trackers, with information about 40 to 60 million
peers that participated in the distribution of over 10 million
torrents. Based on these measurements we show how fundamental
characteristics of the observed distribution of content popularity
change depending on the measurement methodology and the
length of the observation interval. We show that while short-term
or small-scale measurements can conclude that the popularity of
contents exhibits a power-law tail, the tail is likely exponentially
decreasing, especially over long time intervals.