On the stability of two-chunk file-sharing systems

We consider five different peer-to-peer file-sharing systems with two chunks, assuming non-altruistic peers who leave the system immediately after downloading the second chunk. Our aim is to find chunk selection algorithms that have provably stable performance with any input rate. We show that many algorithms that first looked promising lead to unstable or oscillating behaviour. However, we end up with a system with desirable properties. Most of our rigorous results concern the corresponding deterministic large system limits, but in the two simplest cases we provide proofs for the stochastic systems also.